cortecs
Cortecs provides a GDPR-native AI gateway offering an OpenAI-compatible API that routes requests across 150+ models from 10+ European providers. It serves 1,000+ European enterprises, governments, and developers with unified compliance, data sovereignty, and automatic failover.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2021
- HeadquartersVienna, Austria
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What cortecs does
Cortecs GmbH, founded in 2021 and headquartered in Vienna, Austria, operates an AI gateway platform branded as Europe's LLM Router. The core product is a managed gateway that exposes an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint (https://api.cortecs.ai/v1/) and routes requests to more than 150 model endpoints from 10+ European providers, including Mistral, GPT, Claude, Gemini, Qwen, DeepSeek, and Kimi hosted in France, Poland, Germany, and Finland. Routing uses a filter-and-rank architecture: providers that fail customer-specified requirements (price, performance, EU residency, zero data retention, quantization) are eliminated, then remaining options are ranked and selected, with automatic failover supporting a targeted 99.99% uptime. Supporting API products include Chat Completions, Embeddings, Audio Transcription, Text to Speech (BETA), Anthropic Messages (BETA), and a Management API for usage accounting and project configuration.
The company's primary differentiator is its GDPR-native compliance posture. Cortecs acts as the primary Data Processor for payload data rather than a pass-through gateway, managing vendor due diligence, DPAs with all integrated LLM providers, and downstream compliance documentation including SCCs and TIAs through a single agreement. Configurable controls include a Sovereign Cloud setting (EU-only provider routing), Zero Data Retention enforcement, and quantization preference. Certifications include ISO 27001, GDPR compliance, and SOC 2 Type 2. The business model is a 5% flat platform fee on credit top-ups with zero markup on token usage, structured as pure pass-through; the company claims 1,000+ European clients including government (Ministry of Interior Austria, ESA, Austrian Wirtschaftsservice), banking (Raiffeisen-Landesbank Steiermark), energy (Verbund), and technology (Techhouse) accounts.
Go-to-market combines a self-serve API platform with documentation site (docs.cortecs.ai), a Discord developer community, and a formal Enterprise SLA tier (99.9% uptime, tiered support) requiring €10,000+ annual platform spend. Distribution is amplified by native integrations into developer coding tools (Opencode, Kilo Code, Cline), chat frameworks (Open WebUI, LobeChat), agent frameworks (LangChain), and observability tools (Langfuse). The company has 1-10 employees and does not disclose revenue, funding, or ownership structure in available sources.
cortecs firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- cortecs
- Legal name
- Cortecs GmbH
- Website
- https://cortecs.ai
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2021
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Cortecs provides a GDPR-native AI gateway offering an OpenAI-compatible API that routes requests across 150+ models from 10+ European providers. It serves 1,000+ European enterprises, governments, and developers with unified compliance, data sovereignty, and automatic failover.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
cortecs industry classification
Industry- Product category
- AI Infrastructure / LLM Gateway
- akta.pro primary industry
- API Gateway & Application Gateway (L7 Routing/Policy) (HDAFAHAH)
Keywords
Where cortecs is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Vienna
- HQ country
- Austria
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
cortecs business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales
Revenue model
- Platform Service Fee: 5% flat fee on credit purchases with zero markups on token usage. Pass-through model where unit prices directly mirror upstream provider rates. Credit balance used to cover inference costs of upstream providers.
- Token Usage (Pass-through): Direct pass-through of upstream provider token costs without markup. Customers pay provider base rates as published on the dashboard.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Transaction based/ take rate | Pay-as-you-go | Pay-as-you-go credits with 5% platform fee |
| Subscription | Annual | Enterprise SLA for high-volume customers |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels2 records
Marketing channels4 records
cortecs product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Cortecs operates an LLM Router that acts as a managed AI gateway providing access to 150+ model endpoints from 10+ European providers (Mistral, GPT, Claude, Gemini, Qwen, DeepSeek, Kimi hosted in France, Poland, Germany, Finland) through a single OpenAI-compatible API. It uses a filter-and-rank approach to automatically route requests to the optimal upstream provider based on price, performance, and compliance settings (EU-native routing, zero data retention, quantization). Supporting endpoints cover chat completions, embeddings, audio transcription, text-to-speech (BETA), Anthropic Messages (BETA), and a Management API for usage accounting and key administration.
Product overview
Cortecs is a unified AI gateway platform providing access to 150+ LLM model endpoints from 10+ European providers through a single OpenAI-compatible API. The core product is the LLM Router, which acts as a managed gateway handling routing, compliance, and failover. Supporting API products include Chat Completions, Embeddings, Audio Transcription, Text to Speech (BETA), and Anthropic Messages (BETA) endpoints. A Management API enables usage accounting, API key administration, and project configuration. The Compliance Layer provides configurable controls for EU data sovereignty, zero data retention, and quantization. The platform targets European enterprises requiring GDPR compliance, data residency control, and cost-effective access to multiple AI providers without managing individual vendor relationships.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- LLM Router GDPR-compliant AI gateway that routes LLM requests to 10+ European providers through a single OpenAI-compatible API endpoint at https://api.cortecs.ai/v1/. Automatically selects the optimal provider based on price and performance with seamless failover for 99.99% uptime, and supports compliance controls including EU-native routing, zero data retention, and quantization. Used by 1,000+ European clients across banking, government, energy, and aerospace/defense.
- Chat Completions API OpenAI-compatible chat completion endpoint for conversational AI interactions. Supports system prompts, multi-turn conversations, streaming responses, and compliance parameters (eu_native, allow_quantization, allow_zero_data_retention). Routes to 150+ model endpoints from European providers.
- Embeddings API API for generating text embeddings that convert data into dense vectors capturing semantic relationships. Used for search, clustering, recommendations, and integration with vector databases. Available on the OpenAI-compatible endpoint.
- Audio Transcription API Speech-to-text API for transcribing audio files into text using optimized models. Enables audio input processing for LLM interactions through the Cortecs gateway.
- Text to Speech API [BETA]s Speech synthesis API converting text into natural-sounding audio using TTS models. Supports multiple audio formats (mp3, wav, opus) and provider-specific voice options. Marked BETA.
- Anthropic Messages API [BETA]s API endpoint compatible with Anthropic's Messages API for creating responses. Supports tools/function calling, system prompts, streaming, and model fallback configurations. Marked BETA.
- Management API REST API for platform administration including usage accounting (aggregated token/cost metrics bucketed by time and grouped by user, model, or provider), API key lifecycle management (create, list, delete), project configuration retrieval and updates, and user balance retrieval. Requires management API key authentication.
- Enterprise Service Level Agreement Enterprise SLA addendum to Cortecs Terms & Conditions for qualifying high-volume users (≥€10,000 accumulated or projected annual platform spend). Targets 99.9% availability for the Routing Gateway per calendar month, provides service credits for downtime, and offers prioritized support with tiered response times (1 hour critical, 4 hours high, 1 business day normal). Activated via [email protected] upon formal written approval.
Quantifiable outcome
- 99.99% uptime via automatic provider failover
- +2 more outcomes
Companies that use cortecs
Customer profileNamed customers6 records
Segments3 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
cortecs technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration8 records
AI capability8 records
Feature7 records
cortecs partnerships and signals
Strategic signalScale indicators4 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights5 records
cortecs competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- LiteLLM: LiteLLM is an open-source LLM gateway and proxy that standardizes access to 100+ model providers via an OpenAI-compatible interface. It competes directly with Cortecs' routing and provider abstraction, particularly for self-hosted and cost-sensitive deployments.
- Unify: Unify is an LLM routing platform that benchmarks and routes requests across providers to optimize cost and latency. It competes with Cortecs on the same filter-and-rank, price/performance optimization thesis for multi-provider enterprise inference.
- Helicone: Helicone offers an AI gateway with observability, routing, and cost-controls over LLM traffic via a proxy. It serves overlapping developer and enterprise segments and overlaps on the same OpenAI-compatible routing and monitoring functionality Cortecs provides.
- Portkey: Portkey provides an LLM gateway with observability, fallback, and routing features delivered through an OpenAI-compatible API. It targets similar enterprise and developer use cases with comparable gateway, fallback, and provider-agnostic abstractions.
- OpenRouter: OpenRouter is the most direct competitor and is explicitly named by Cortecs in its FAQ. It offers a unified OpenAI-compatible API that routes requests across many LLM providers with a similar pricing model, competing head-to-head for the same developer/enterprise audience.
Broad incumbents
- Azure OpenAI Service: Azure OpenAI Service provides enterprise access to foundation models with EU data residency, compliance certifications, and SLAs. It overlaps Cortecs' regulated European inference offering but as part of Microsoft's broader enterprise cloud stack.
- Google Vertex AI: Vertex AI is Google's enterprise AI platform offering model hosting, routing, and MLOps tooling with strong EU compliance posture. It competes indirectly with Cortecs by offering routing and model access as part of a full hyperscaler stack.
- AWS Bedrock: Amazon Bedrock is a managed service providing unified access to multiple foundation models with enterprise-grade security, compliance, and routing. It competes with Cortecs as a broader platform offering routing as one feature within a much larger cloud portfolio.
Emerging players
- Together AI: Together AI provides hosted open-source model inference with API access and routing across model families. It overlaps with Cortecs on multi-provider access for European developers but also competes as an upstream provider Cortecs routes to.
- Mistral AI (La Plateforme): Mistral AI offers direct enterprise API access to its models hosted in Europe, partially overlapping with Cortecs' EU-sovereign model catalog. It is both a key upstream provider for Cortecs and a potential competitor for direct enterprise contracts.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
cortecs social profiles
Digital presencecortecs compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance4 records
cortecs financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
cortecs leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
cortecs funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds1 record
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
cortecs M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about cortecs
What does cortecs do?
Cortecs operates an LLM Router that acts as a managed AI gateway providing access to 150+ model endpoints from 10+ European providers (Mistral, GPT, Claude, Gemini, Qwen, DeepSeek, Kimi hosted in France, Poland, Germany, Finland) through a single OpenAI-compatible API. It uses a filter-and-rank approach to automatically route requests to the optimal upstream provider based on price, performance, and compliance settings (EU-native routing, zero data retention, quantization). Supporting endpoints cover chat completions, embeddings, audio transcription, text-to-speech (BETA), Anthropic Messages (BETA), and a Management API for usage accounting and key administration.
Is cortecs a public or private company?
cortecs is a private company. It is classified as unknown and is currently operating.
When was cortecs founded?
cortecs was founded in 2021. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is cortecs based?
cortecs is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, in the Europe region.
How does cortecs make money?
Two revenue lines are on record. Platform Service Fee is the primary driver. The others are token Usage (Pass-through).
Who are cortecs's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are LiteLLM, Unify, Helicone, Portkey and OpenRouter. Broad incumbents are Azure OpenAI Service, Google Vertex AI and AWS Bedrock. Emerging players are Together AI and Mistral AI (La Plateforme).
Does cortecs have an API?
Yes. Cortecs provides an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint at https://api.cortecs.ai/v1/ that allows developers to route requests to multiple LLM providers. The API supports Chat Completions, Embeddings, Audio Transcription, Text to Speech (BETA), Anthropic Messages (BETA), and a Management API for usage accounting, API key management, and project configuration. Authentication uses Bearer tokens (API keys). The service acts as a managed gateway, routing requests to upstream providers with compliance controls including EU-native routing, zero data retention settings, and quantization preferences. Developer documentation is at docs.cortecs.ai.
What industry is cortecs in?
cortecs's product category is AI Infrastructure / LLM Gateway. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAFAHAH, API Gateway & Application Gateway (L7 Routing/Policy).