What LiteLLM Is
LiteLLM is an open-source LLM proxy that provides a unified OpenAI-compatible API in front of 100+ LLM providers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, Google Vertex, AWS Bedrock, Cohere, Mistral, and dozens more. The core value proposition: write your code once against the OpenAI format, and LiteLLM routes it to whatever model and provider you want. Change providers without changing application code.
LiteLLM also includes budget management at the team/key level, spend tracking, rate limiting, and basic audit logging. It’s widely adopted by DevOps and platform teams managing LLM infrastructure across a multi-model organization.
What Sentrely Is
Sentrely is a managed control plane for Claude Code agents specifically. Claude Code agents aren’t just making LLM API calls — they’re reading git repositories, pushing code, accessing S3 buckets, calling external APIs, making database queries. Sentrely governs all of those actions: what each agent is allowed to access, which operations require human approval, how much each agent can spend, and what the immutable audit trail looks like for compliance.
The Gap That Matters
LiteLLM knows about LLM calls. Sentrely knows about agent actions.
When claude-deploy-01 wants to push a commit to main, LiteLLM has no concept of that operation — it only sees the Claude API call that preceded it. Sentrely intercepts the git push itself, checks the agent’s policy (git:push on main requires_approval: true), routes the approval request to Slack, and logs the outcome. The control surface is completely different.
| Capability | LiteLLM | Sentrely |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-provider LLM routing | Yes — 100+ providers | No — Claude Code focused |
| OpenAI-compatible proxy | Yes | No |
| Provider fallbacks | Yes | No |
| Semantic caching | No (requires add-ons) | No |
| Per-agent RBAC (git, AWS, APIs) | No | Yes |
| Human approval gates | No | Yes — Slack + Telegram |
| Agent action audit trail | LLM calls only | Every agent action |
| SOC 2 / HIPAA compliance evidence | Not designed for this | Yes |
| Session kill switch | No | Yes |
| Token budgets per agent session | Key-level budgets | Per-session hard caps |
| Claude Code specific | No | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes (open-source) | Managed (or Enterprise VPC) |
| Pricing | Free / Enterprise | Starter $49/mo |
When LiteLLM Is the Right Choice
- Your team uses multiple LLM providers and wants to abstract provider differences
- You’re on a platform team managing LLM access for many teams and models
- You want self-hosted, open-source infrastructure you own and operate
- Your primary concern is routing, caching, and spend visibility at the API call level
When Sentrely Is the Right Choice
- You’re running Claude Code agents that touch production systems: git repos, AWS, databases, external APIs
- Individual agents need different access scopes (deploy agent vs. review agent vs. data agent)
- Certain agent operations — pushing to main, deleting data, sending emails — need human approval
- You need to pass a compliance audit covering AI agent operations
- You need to answer “what did agent X do last Tuesday at 2pm?”
Can You Use Both?
LiteLLM handles the LLM call layer. Sentrely handles the agent action layer. They don’t overlap much because they’re operating at different levels — LiteLLM sees Claude API requests, Sentrely sees agent tool calls against real systems.
If you’re running Claude Code agents, the relevant question isn’t “which LLM should this call go to” — it’s “should this agent be allowed to do this, and does a human need to approve it first?” That’s a Sentrely problem, not a LiteLLM problem.