Configuring the LLM

LLM Evaluators require an LLM in order to score an evaluation input. Given the wide range of providers and SDKs, phoenix-evals provides an LLM abstraction that delegates LLM calls to an appropriate SDK/API that is already available in your Python environment. The configuration arguments of the SDK client and LLM call invocation parameters will be the same as the target SDK so you won't have to learn another API.

To see the currently supported LLM providers, use the show_provider_availability function.

from phoenix.evals.llm import show_provider_availability

show_provider_availability()

# 📦 AVAILABLE PROVIDERS (sorted by client priority)
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# Provider  | Status      | Client    | Dependencies                  
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# azure     | ✓ Available | openai    | openai               
# openai    | ✓ Available | openai    | openai               
# openai    | ✓ Available | langchain | langchain, langchain_openai
# openai    | ✓ Available | litellm   | litellm              
# anthropic | ✓ Available | langchain | langchain, langchain_anthropic
# anthropic | ✓ Available | litellm   | litellm       

The provider column shows the supported providers, and the status column will read "Available" if the required dependencies are installed in the active Python environment. Note that multiple client SDKs can be used to make LLM requests to a provider, the desired client SDK can be specified when constructing the LLM wrapper client.

from phoenix.evals.llm import LLM

LLM(provider="openai", model="gpt-5")  # uses the the first available provider SDK
LLM(provider="openai", model="gpt-5", client="litellm")  # uses LiteLLM to make requests

Client Configuration

The LLM wrappers can be configured the same way you'd configure the underlying client SDK. For example, when using the OpenAI Python Client:

from phoenix.evals.llm import LLM

LLM(provider="openai", model="gpt-5", client="openai", api_key="my-openai-api-key")

Similarly for OpenAI's Azure Python Client:

from phoenix.evals.llm import LLM

llm = LLM(
    provider="azure",
    model="gpt-5o",
    api_key="your-api-key",
    api_version="api-version",
    base_url="base-url",
)

Unified Interface

The LLM wrapper provides a unified interface to common LLM operations: generating text and structured outputs. For more information, refer to the API Documentation.