Alternatives hub · AI Gateway
Portkey alternatives
Portkey's open-source gateway is free, but its hosted plans meter recorded logs: Developer is free at 10k logs a month and not for production, Production is $49 a month for 100k logs. The alternatives are free self-hosted gateways (LiteLLM, Bifrost), Cloudflare AI Gateway's free analytics layer, and hosted gateways with a fee on spend (OpenRouter, Requesty).
Our pick
LiteLLM for a free self-hosted gateway, Cloudflare AI Gateway for free hosted analytics
Best free self-hosted alternative
LiteLLM — 100+ providers, virtual keys, spend tracking, budgets and request logging, with no per-log fee. You run it, and should pin versions.
Best free hosted alternative
Cloudflare AI Gateway — Analytics, caching and rate limiting are free on every Cloudflare plan, in front of your own provider keys.
Best hosted alternative on spend limits
Requesty — Model cost plus 5%, with spend limits per key, budget caps and real-time cost tracking.
None of these is an affiliate partner, so this pick is not commission-driven.
Quick answer
Portkey is an AI gateway with production tooling: an MIT-licensed open-source gateway you can self-host, plus a hosted panel with logs, guardrails, prompt management and budgets. Its hosted cost follows log volume: Developer is free (10k recorded logs a month, 3-day retention, not for production), Production is $49 a month for 100k logs with $9 per extra 100k, and Enterprise is custom. Free alternatives: LiteLLM and Bifrost self-host with no per-log fee, and Cloudflare AI Gateway gives free analytics, caching and rate limiting. Hosted alternatives that charge on spend instead: Requesty (model cost plus 5%) and OpenRouter (5.5% platform fee).
Alternatives at a glance
Same job, different trade-offs. Open any profile for full sources and limitations.
| Tool | Category | Best for | Pricing note | Pricing source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LiteLLM | AI Gateway | Developers and platform teams who want a self-hosted, free AI gateway with granular spend control, virtual keys, and fallbacks — without per-token platform fees. | Open source and self-hosted is free forever ($0): 100+ providers behind one OpenAI-compatible API with virtual keys, users and teams, spend tracking, budgets and rate limits, LLM fallbacks, request/response logging, and Prometheus metrics. Enterprise is priced annually by gateway request capacity (never per token) and adds SSO/SCIM, OIDC/JWT auth, audit logs, secret managers and key rotation, org and team admins, multi-region control plane, 24/7 support with SLAs, and air-gap deployment; a 30-day trial key is available without a credit card. from litellm.ai/pricing. | litellm.ai · checked |
| Bifrost | AI Gateway | Engineering teams running high-traffic LLM apps that want a fast, self-hosted gateway with failover and caching, and an enterprise path for clustering and guardrails. | Open source under Apache 2.0 and free to self-host. Bifrost Enterprise (private deployments with adaptive load balancing, clustering, guardrails and an MCP gateway) has a 14-day free trial; its price is not published. | getmaxim.ai · checked |
| Cloudflare AI Gateway | AI Gateway | Developers already on Cloudflare who want free caching, rate limiting and usage analytics in front of their existing provider keys with one line of code. | Core features (dashboard analytics, caching, rate limiting) are free on all plans. Unified Billing adds a 5% fee on purchased credits, with provider inference passed through at no markup. DLP scanning is free; Guardrails is billed as Workers AI inference. Logs: gateways created from September 24, 2026 follow Workers Logs pricing; earlier gateways keep Legacy Logs (100,000 logs on Workers Free, 10 million per gateway on Workers Paid). Logpush needs Workers Paid (10M requests/month, then $0.05 per million). | developers.cloudflare.com · checked |
| OpenRouter | AI Gateway | Developers and teams who want one API key for many models with hosted reliability, without running or maintaining any gateway infrastructure. | Pay-as-you-go with prepaid credits; model prices pass through at list price. Free: 25+ free models from 4 providers, 50 requests/day. Standard: 500+ models from 80+ providers, 5.5% platform fee, provider passthrough rate limits. Business: 8% platform fee, adds EU/US in-region routing and up to 1,000 workspaces. BYOK is fee-free up to $25,000/month of list-price inference, then 5%. Enterprise: custom, SSO/SAML and SLAs. | openrouter.ai · checked |
| Requesty | AI Gateway | Developers who want an OpenRouter-style hosted gateway with a flat 5% markup, bring-your-own-keys and EU data residency, without running infrastructure. | Free: $0, access to free models, 200 requests/day, routing, caching and EU data residency. Pay as you go: model cost plus a 5% markup (a $10 per 1M-token model costs $10.50), 600+ models, bring your own keys, spend limits, MCP gateway. Enterprise: custom (SSO, RBAC, audit logs, SLAs). No per-seat pricing or minimum spend. | requesty.ai · checked |
Choose the right alternative
LiteLLM
Developers and platform teams who want a self-hosted, free AI gateway with granular spend control, virtual keys, and fallbacks — without per-token platform fees.
Open source and self-hosted is free forever ($0): 100+ providers behind one OpenAI-compatible API with virtual keys, users and teams, spend tracking, budgets and rate limits, LLM fallbacks, request/response logging, and Prometheus metrics. Enterprise is priced annually by gateway request capacity (never per token) and adds SSO/SCIM, OIDC/JWT auth, audit logs, secret managers and key rotation, org and team admins, multi-region control plane, 24/7 support with SLAs, and air-gap deployment; a 30-day trial key is available without a credit card. from litellm.ai/pricing.
Bifrost
Engineering teams running high-traffic LLM apps that want a fast, self-hosted gateway with failover and caching, and an enterprise path for clustering and guardrails.
Open source under Apache 2.0 and free to self-host. Bifrost Enterprise (private deployments with adaptive load balancing, clustering, guardrails and an MCP gateway) has a 14-day free trial; its price is not published.
Cloudflare AI Gateway
Developers already on Cloudflare who want free caching, rate limiting and usage analytics in front of their existing provider keys with one line of code.
Core features (dashboard analytics, caching, rate limiting) are free on all plans. Unified Billing adds a 5% fee on purchased credits, with provider inference passed through at no markup. DLP scanning is free; Guardrails is billed as Workers AI inference. Logs: gateways created from September 24, 2026 follow Workers Logs pricing; earlier gateways keep Legacy Logs (100,000 logs on Workers Free, 10 million per gateway on Workers Paid). Logpush needs Workers Paid (10M requests/month, then $0.05 per million).
OpenRouter
Developers and teams who want one API key for many models with hosted reliability, without running or maintaining any gateway infrastructure.
Pay-as-you-go with prepaid credits; model prices pass through at list price. Free: 25+ free models from 4 providers, 50 requests/day. Standard: 500+ models from 80+ providers, 5.5% platform fee, provider passthrough rate limits. Business: 8% platform fee, adds EU/US in-region routing and up to 1,000 workspaces. BYOK is fee-free up to $25,000/month of list-price inference, then 5%. Enterprise: custom, SSO/SAML and SLAs.
Requesty
Developers who want an OpenRouter-style hosted gateway with a flat 5% markup, bring-your-own-keys and EU data residency, without running infrastructure.
Free: $0, access to free models, 200 requests/day, routing, caching and EU data residency. Pay as you go: model cost plus a 5% markup (a $10 per 1M-token model costs $10.50), 600+ models, bring your own keys, spend limits, MCP gateway. Enterprise: custom (SSO, RBAC, audit logs, SLAs). No per-seat pricing or minimum spend.
Direct comparisons
Side-by-side pages involving Portkey.
What Portkey costs, and why people compare
Per Portkey's pricing page, Developer is free forever with 10k recorded logs a month and 3 days of log retention, and is described as not suitable for production. Production is $49 a month with 100k recorded logs, 30 days of log retention and 90 days of metrics, and overages are $9 per additional 100k requests. Enterprise is custom and adds SSO, VPC hosting and compliance such as SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA.
The open-source gateway is free to self-host, but it gives routing and guardrails rather than the full hosted dashboard. That gap is the usual reason to compare: either pay for the hosted panel, or pick a gateway whose logging lives on your own infrastructure.
Which alternative fits which job
LiteLLM: free to self-host with 100+ providers, virtual keys, users and teams, spend tracking, budgets, rate limits, request and response logging and Prometheus metrics. It needs PostgreSQL and uptime from you, and its Enterprise edition is priced annually by request capacity.
Bifrost: Apache-2.0 and free to self-host, with failover, load balancing, semantic caching, virtual keys, budgets and OpenTelemetry observability. Clustering, adaptive load balancing and guardrails are enterprise features, and its latency numbers are the vendor's own.
Cloudflare AI Gateway: free dashboard analytics, caching and rate limiting on every Cloudflare plan, with your own provider keys. Gateways created from September 24, 2026 follow Workers Logs pricing for logs, and there is no self-hosted edition.
OpenRouter and Requesty: hosted gateways that charge on spend, not on logs. OpenRouter lists 500+ models and a 5.5% platform fee on Standard; Requesty charges the model cost plus 5% and offers EU data residency on every plan.
A quick way to choose
If you need guardrails and prompt versioning in one hosted tool, Portkey is built for that. If you mostly need routing, budgets and logs and can run a server, LiteLLM or Bifrost remove the per-log meter. If you want no server and no log meter, a spend-based hosted gateway or Cloudflare's free layer is the cheaper starting point.
Head-to-head: Portkey vs LiteLLM, or see every option in the best AI API gateways.
Run it 24/7 on your own server
Portkey and LiteLLM run on your own machine, so it stops answering when your laptop sleeps. A small Linux VPS with Docker keeps it online for scripts, agents and teammates, with a fixed monthly cost instead of per-token markup.
- Start with the smallest plan that runs Docker; upgrade only if you add users or local models.
- Keep the gateway bound to localhost or behind a firewall, and store provider keys as environment variables.
- Monthly billing lets you test before committing to a long term.
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Frequently asked questions
- What is the best alternative to Portkey?
- For a free self-hosted gateway, LiteLLM (virtual keys, budgets, request logging) or Bifrost (Apache 2.0, failover and caching). For a free hosted layer, Cloudflare AI Gateway's analytics, caching and rate limiting. For a hosted gateway that charges on spend instead of logs, Requesty (model cost plus 5%) or OpenRouter (5.5% platform fee).
- Is there a free alternative to Portkey?
- Yes. LiteLLM and Bifrost are free to self-host, Cloudflare AI Gateway's core features are free, and Portkey's own open-source gateway is free too. Portkey's free Developer plan is capped at 10k recorded logs a month and is not meant for production.
- How much does Portkey cost?
- Developer is free (10k recorded logs a month, 3-day retention, not for production). Production is $49 a month for 100k recorded logs with $9 per additional 100k. Enterprise is custom. The open-source gateway is free to self-host.
- What is the best alternative to Portkey?
- The most direct alternative to Portkey is LiteLLM. It is best suited for developers and platform teams who want a self-hosted, free AI gateway with granular spend control, virtual keys, and fallbacks — without per-token platform fees. You can also evaluate Bifrost, Cloudflare AI Gateway, OpenRouter, Requesty depending on your specific requirements. Use the decision table above to compare pricing and feature trade-offs.
Keep the decision honest
Pricing, credit systems, and commercial terms change often. Every profile is checked against the official site — Verify the current plan before subscribing. Estimate your gateway cost If an alternative here does not fit, the comparisons hub covers more pairs.