LLM Providers & Unified Interfaces
Now that you know the basics, let's explore where to get these models. Whether you want to use a powerful cloud API or run open-source models on your own laptop.
A. LLM Providers
Sources for accessing large language models.
1. API Based LLMs
- Groq APISpeed King
Incredibly fast inference speed.
- Claude API (Anthropic)Smartest
Top-tier reasoning and large context windows.
- OpenAI APIStandard
The industry standard (GPT-4o, GPT-3.5).
- Gemini API (Google)Multimodal
Multimodal capabilities and deep ecosystem integration.
- DeepSeek API
Powerful open-weights models and strong coding capabilities.
- Cohere API
Specialized in enterprise RAG and embeddings.
2. Local LLMs
Run models on your own hardware for privacy, zero cost, and offline access.
- Hugging Face Models
The "GitHub of AI" - download raw model weights (GGUF, Safetensors) for any open-source model.
- Ollama
The easiest way to run local models (Llama 3, Mistral, Gemma).
Local LaptopGoogle Colab - LM Studio
A user-friendly desktop application to discover, download, and chat with local LLMs.
B. Unified LLM Interfaces
One simplified way to access MANY providers.
Instead of writing different code for OpenAI, Anthropic, and Local models, these tools give you a single standard format (usually OpenAI-compatible) to switch between any provider instantly.
LiteLLM
Open-source Python library to call 100+ LLM APIs using the OpenAI format.
Aisuite
Simple, unified interface for multiple AI providers.
OpenRouter
A paid service that aggregates best models at the lowest prices.
Bytez
Cloud platform for hosting and running open-source models effortlessly.