Every AI gateway adds a hop between your app and the model. The question that matters is what that hop costs at the moment your user is staring at a blank chat window: the time to first token. Most gateway latency debates skip the measurement and argue architecture — so we measured it.
Source: [Dev.to](https://dev.to/smakosh/openrouter-vs-vercel-vs-llmgateway-performance-1f6a)