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Gateways occupy the demand side of the Livepeer network. They are the control point between applications and the GPU compute network - handling routing, payments, service-level logic, and customer relationships. This page is for anyone evaluating whether running a gateway is the right strategic or business decision.

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Start here in 5 minutes

Gateway Economics

Understanding how gateways earn money at the business layer, not the protocol layer.

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The Core Business Model

Gateways in Livepeer do not earn fees at the protocol level. Orchestrators earn protocol fees; gateways earn at the business layer - the margin between what you charge customers and what you pay orchestrators. 
Customer pays Gateway → Gateway pays Orchestrator → Gateway keeps the margin
This model is similar to how cloud providers, CDNs, and API intermediaries work: the compute is commoditised and distributed; the value is in reliability, customer relationships, product surface, and trust.

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Top reasons now

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Why Operate a Gateway

Keep your ingestion, routing, failover, and delivery policy in one layer you own.
  • Route traffic by latency, cost, or region
  • Enforce your own SLA and quality thresholds
Example: A streaming platform routes all encoder traffic through its own gateway so policy stays internal.
Charge for managed access and support above raw compute cost.
  • Set your own pricing and packaging
  • Bundle dashboards, analytics, and support
Example: A video API product charges per minute, pays orchestrators, and keeps service margin.
Enterprise and regulated workloads need policy controls that exist at the gateway layer.
  • Add auth, rate limits, allowlists, and audit logs
  • Enforce data residency and region restrictions
Example: A media company enforces EU-only processing through gateway routing policy.
Build customer-facing features that are independent of orchestrator churn.
  • Offer stable API contracts and versioning
  • Add vertical presets and workflow templates
Example: Studio and Daydream differentiate on product surface while using the same underlying network.
Owning demand flow gives you leverage as protocol incentives and workloads evolve.
  • Shape routing best practices and reliability standards
  • Expand from internal use to commercial gateway offerings
Example: A public-good gateway can later productize reliability tooling for commercial users.

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Who Is Running Gateways Today

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The Gateway Opportunity Space

As Livepeer’s AI inference network grows, gateway operators are positioned at the layer where:
  • Demand aggregation happens - applications connect to gateways, not directly to orchestrators
  • Service differentiation is built - feature sets, pricing models, and SLAs are gateway-layer decisions
  • Business relationships live - customers buy from gateway operators, not from the protocol
The underlying GPU supply is decentralized and competitive. The opportunity is in building the product, service, and customer layer on top of it.

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Get Started

Run a Gateway: Quickstart

Get a gateway running in under 10 minutes.

Why Run a Gateway

More detail on technical and business motivations.

Gateway Requirements

Hardware, network, and software requirements.

Gateway Economics

How gateway payments and business pricing work.
Last modified on March 9, 2026