OSS vs Ferro Labs Managed
The open-source gateway is the engine that powers both editions. Ferro Labs Managed wraps it with multi-tenancy, fleet and team controls, durable billing, semantic caching, SSO, and managed operations.
Feature comparison
| Feature | OSS Gateway | Ferro Labs Managed |
|---|---|---|
| Providers | 30 providers, 2,500+ models | ✅ Same |
| Routing strategies | 8 (single, fallback, load-balance, conditional, least-latency, cost-optimized, content-based, ab-test) | ✅ Same |
| Streaming | ✅ SSE + full MCP agentic loop | ✅ Same |
| MCP tool servers | ✅ | ✅ Same |
| OSS plugins | ✅ 11 plugins | ✅ Same |
word-filter, max-token, response-cache, request-logger, rate-limit, budget, pii-redact, secret-scan, prompt-shield, schema-guard, regex-guard | Same | |
| Managed guardrails | — | ✅ CEL custom policy rules + consent-gated Lakera Guard and OpenAI Moderation preflight |
| Prompt templates | ✅ Config-file defined | ✅ Config-file + Dashboard UI (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| Admin REST API | ✅ Full read/write | ✅ Same + Team scoping (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| Multi-tenancy | — | ✅ Isolated per-tenant gateway instances (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| Dashboard | ✅ Embedded operations dashboard | ✅ Managed fleet and team controls |
| Virtual key management | Config file | ✅ Dashboard + API (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| Spend tracking | In-memory (resets on restart) | ✅ Durable (PostgreSQL), per-key/team (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| Semantic caching | — | ✅ pgvector-based similarity cache (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| Billing integration | — | ✅ Stripe (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| SSO / OAuth | — | ✅ Google, GitHub, SAML (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| Audit logs | request-logger plugin (SQLite/Postgres) | ✅ Cloud-hosted, queryable (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| Prometheus metrics | ✅ /metrics endpoint | ✅ Pre-built Grafana dashboards (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| Alerting | Bring your own | ✅ Built-in (cost thresholds, error rate) (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| SLA | None (community support) | ✅ 99.9% uptime SLA (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| Support | GitHub Issues | ✅ Priority email + Slack (Ferro Labs Managed) |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Proprietary |
| Deployment | Self-hosted | Managed cloud (hosted by Ferro Labs) |
Ferro Labs Managed plans
The open-source AI Gateway is fully available for self-hosting today. Ferro Labs Managed plans and pricing are coming soon.
Ferro Labs Managed pricing and feature tiers will be announced when the platform exits early access. Join the waitlist →
Content guardrails
The five content guardrails ship in the Apache-licensed OSS gateway and run locally:
| Plugin | What it does |
|---|---|
pii-redact | Detects email, phone, SSN, credit cards, and custom patterns; blocks, redacts, or records. |
secret-scan | Detects curated credential formats and custom patterns in requests and responses. |
prompt-shield | Detects common prompt-injection and jailbreak phrasing with deterministic heuristics. |
schema-guard | Validates model output against the supported JSON Schema subset. |
regex-guard | Blocks, warns, or logs arbitrary named regex rules. |
See Content guardrails for actions, supported kinds, and stage restrictions.
Ferro Labs Managed additionally provides project- and workspace-scoped CEL custom policy rules and external moderation preflight.
When to use the OSS gateway
- You need full control over infrastructure and data residency
- You are building a side project, prototype, or internal tool
- You want to self-host without per-seat licensing
- You are contributing to the open-source project
When to use Ferro Labs Managed
- You need multi-tenant isolation (SaaS product built on top of Ferro)
- You want a managed dashboard with spend controls and team management
- You need CEL rules that combine request, identity, time, PII, and prompt-injection attributes
- You prefer SLA-backed infrastructure without DevOps overhead
Migration path: OSS → Ferro Labs Managed
Start with the open-source gateway. Upgrade to Ferro Labs Managed when you hit one of these triggers:
-
You need multi-tenant isolation. Your SaaS product has multiple customers and you need per-tenant gateway instances, usage tracking, and billing. The OSS gateway is single-tenant by design.
-
You need durable spend tracking. The OSS
budgetplugin tracks spend in-memory — it resets on restart. Ferro Labs Managed stores spend data in PostgreSQL with per-key, per-team granularity and Stripe billing integration.
Your config.yaml is compatible between OSS and Ferro Labs Managed. Migration is a deployment change, not a config rewrite. Join the Ferro Labs Managed waitlist →
Data handling
Both editions process requests exclusively at runtime — model inputs and outputs are not stored by default. Enabling the request-logger plugin (OSS) or enabling logging in Ferro Labs Managed explicitly opts you into persistence. See data handling for details.
Licensing
The open-source gateway is licensed under Apache 2.0. You can use it commercially, modify it, and distribute it. Ferro Labs Managed is a proprietary managed service.
Related pages
- Ferro Labs Managed overview — architecture, plans, and features
- Semantic caching — pgvector-based response cache (Ferro Labs Managed Pro+)
- Enterprise features — SSO, RBAC, audit logs, compliance
- Benchmarks — performance data for the OSS gateway engine