Dust vs UnoRouter: Which Is Better in 2026?

Dust is a platform that helps companies build and deploy custom AI agents and assistants connected to their own data, tools and workflows — bringing the power of AI to everyday work across teams. Rather than each employee using generic AI in isolation, Dust lets organizations create tailored AI assistants that know the company's knowledge, integrate with its systems, and help with real tasks, turning AI from a novelty into a genuinely useful part of how teams operate.

The platform connects to the tools and data a company already uses — documents, wikis, chat, code, CRMs and more — so the AI assistants can answer questions and take actions grounded in the organization's actual information. Teams can build specialized agents for different functions: a support assistant that knows the help docs, an engineering assistant that understands the codebase, a sales assistant with CRM context, and so on. This makes AI immediately practical, helping employees find information, draft content, analyze data and automate routine work without leaving their flow.

Dust emphasizes giving companies a safe, controllable way to roll out AI broadly — with the governance, data connections and customization that enterprises need, rather than a free-for-all. It supports multiple underlying models and is designed to keep a company's data secure while making it useful. As organizations look to actually capture the productivity gains AI promises — beyond individuals copy-pasting into chatbots — platforms that operationalize AI across teams and connect it to real company knowledge are increasingly important. Dust has become a notable player in this space, helping companies build their own AI assistants. For teams that want to deploy practical, knowledge-aware AI agents across their organization, Dust offers a flexible, powerful and business-ready platform.

UnoRouter is an open-source LLM gateway for developers and teams comparing OpenRouter alternatives who want one bill, one key and full visibility into how their AI requests are routed.

The problem it solves
Most products that use AI end up talking to several labs. One feature runs on GPT, another on Claude, a third on Gemini or an open model like DeepSeek or Qwen. Each provider brings its own account, API key, SDK quirks, rate limits and invoice, and each one can go down at the worst moment. UnoRouter puts all of that behind a single OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so you integrate once and choose the model by name.

How it works
Point any OpenAI SDK, or any tool that accepts a custom base URL, at UnoRouter and use your UnoRouter key. Requests are routed to a healthy upstream provider. If that provider returns errors, rate limits you or times out, the call is retried on another provider automatically, which keeps chat features and agents running through upstream incidents. Streaming and tool calls come back in the familiar OpenAI format.

Who it is for
Developers building AI features into SaaS products, people using coding agents such as Claude Code, Cline or OpenCode who want to switch models freely, and anyone who prefers one dashboard with per key and per model usage over a stack of provider consoles. It also suits small teams that want to try a new model the day it ships without signing another contract.

How it compares
Unlike closed routers, the whole UnoRouter stack is open source on GitHub: the storefront, the backend, the gateway and the tooling that syncs and tests providers. The built-in web chat is local-first, so conversations are stored in your browser instead of on a server.

Pricing
There is a free tier with free models that needs no credit card. Paid models are pay-as-you-go from prepaid credit, with no subscription and no monthly minimum.

What problem it solves

Teams that use several AI labs end up juggling separate keys, SDKs, invoices and outages. UnoRouter replaces that with one OpenAI-compatible key and automatic failover between providers.

Alternatives & competitors

An open-source alternative to OpenRouter, Portkey and LiteLLM style gateways, with local-first chat and a free tier that needs no card.