We built open OpenRouter that turns usage into a better model
Hi HN, we built an open source model gateway. It's a single place to manage our own self hosted, frontier, and open source models in one place. It’s is rust native, built for concurrency, and implements all the config quirks across models and providers (streaming formats, tool calls, model parameters, rate limits, and different error behavior). The gateway adds under 1 ms for BYOK requests and under 2 ms when Experiential supplies the provider key. It has every major inference provider, and 1000+ models refreshed daily via a codex agent that opens a PR. Compared to other similar projects…
We built open OpenRouter that turns usage into a better model launched on August 27, 2026 with 222 votes, #133 of 23,274 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches.
In plain words
Experiential is an open source model gateway that unifies access to self-hosted, open source, and commercial AI models through a single control plane. Built in Rust for high concurrency, it normalizes configuration differences across providers including streaming formats, tool calls, and error handling, with minimal latency overhead under 2ms. The gateway supports over 1000 models refreshed daily and offers both local and hosted deployment options with OpenAI-compatible APIs, allowing users to mix local models with managed providers while optionally contributing usage data to improve custom models.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Experiential is the open source, zero markup gateway for BYOK, self-hosted and 1000+ marketplace models. It learns from your traffic to cut costs, recommend better models, and train a specialized model you own. - experientiallabs/experiential
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi HN, we built an open source model gateway. It's a single place to manage our own self hosted, frontier, and open source models in one place. It’s is rust native, built for concurrency, and implements all the config quirks across models and providers (streaming formats, tool calls, model parameters, rate limits…
Does a similar job
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