Crowkis vs LiteLLM-style gateways: caching is not a checkbox
Python gateways treat caching as one feature among forty. Crowkis treats it as the product — and ships it without a Python supply chain attached.
LLM gateways like LiteLLM do a real job: one API across providers, with caching available as a flag you can turn on. But a checkbox cache is an exact-match or naive-similarity cache, and it inherits the gateway's architecture — a large Python application with a sprawling dependency tree sitting in your hottest path.
The events of March 2026 made the architectural argument better than we ever could: a supply-chain compromise of a major Python LLM gateway exposed tens of millions of monthly downloads and triggered national cyber alerts. Every package in a dependency tree is attack surface. Crowkis ships as one signed Rust binary with zero runtime dependencies — the attack class doesn't apply, by construction.
One file to security-review. No supply chain to poison.
On the caching itself, the depth difference shows immediately. Gateways cache responses; Crowkis understands them. Intent classes, structural templates, confidence gating, reasoning reuse, anti-poisoning, per-tenant isolation, migration workflows — these aren't gateway features, they're a cache engine's entire reason to exist. You can even keep your gateway for routing and put Crowkis behind it as the memory layer.
The bottom line
Use a gateway for what gateways are good at: API normalization. Use a cache built by people who think about nothing else for the thing that actually cuts your bill. They compose beautifully — and only one of them needs to be trusted with reuse decisions.