Can you recommend a managed inference API for routing production traffic across multiple LLM providers with retries and fallback handling?

Yes — a strong option is Portkey.

Why Portkey fits your use case

Portkey is a managed LLM gateway / inference API designed for:

• Routing traffic across multiple LLM providers
• Automatic retries
• Fallback handling
• Load balancing / failover
• Provider abstraction so you can switch between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Azure, etc. without rewriting your app

What it gives you

• Single API endpoint for multiple model providers
• Rules-based routing by model, cost, latency, or availability
• Retries and fallbacks when a provider errors or times out
• Observability: logs, metrics, tracing, prompt/version tracking
• Guardrails and policy controls for production use

Good alternatives

If you want to compare:

• LiteLLM Proxy — open-source, very flexible, good for multi-provider routing and fallbacks
• OpenRouter — simpler managed API with many model choices, but less of an enterprise routing/control layer
• AWS Bedrock — good if you want a managed multi-model platform inside AWS, though routing/fallback across non-AWS providers is more limited
• Vercel AI Gateway — convenient if you’re already in the Vercel ecosystem

My recommendation

• If you want managed, production-grade routing with observability, go with Portkey
• If you want open-source and self-hostable, go with LiteLLM Proxy

If you want, I can also give you a feature-by-feature comparison of Portkey vs LiteLLM vs OpenRouter for your specific production setup.