AI Gateway tool profile
Portkey
An AI gateway and LLM-ops platform: an MIT-licensed open-source gateway you can self-host, plus a hosted control panel with logs, guardrails, prompt management and budgets.
Independent research from official sources · Sources · How we review
- Best for
- Teams putting LLM features into production that need observability, guardrails and key management on top of routing, with the option to self-host the open-source gateway.
- Starting point
- Developer: free forever, 10k recorded logs/month, 3-day log retention, not for production.
- Free plan
- Yes — Developer plan is free forever with 10k recorded logs per month and 3-day log retention.
- Key limitation
- The free Developer plan is not meant for production workloads
Choose it if
Strongest for
Built for
Avoid it if
- Log volume drives cost on the hosted plans: overages are $9 per additional 100k requests on Production
- Self-hosting the open-source gateway gives routing and guardrails but not the full hosted dashboard
Free-plan suitability
Developer plan is free forever with 10k recorded logs per month and 3-day log retention; Portkey says it is for prototyping, not production.
Pricing
Developer: free forever, 10k recorded logs/month, 3-day log retention, not for production. Production: $49/month, 100k recorded logs/month (+$9 per additional 100k), 30-day log retention, LLM guardrails, RBAC, semantic caching. Enterprise: custom (SSO, VPC hosting, SOC2/HIPAA). The open-source gateway is free to self-host.
Verify the current plan, credits, output limits, and commercial terms before purchasing.
Run it 24/7 on your own server
Portkey runs 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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What Portkey does
- Universal OpenAI-compatible API with fallbacks, load balancing, retries and timeouts
- Open-source gateway (MIT, about 13k GitHub stars) that you can host yourself
- Hosted observability: logs, traces, feedback, metadata, filters and alerts
- Guardrails, prompt templates with versioning, simple and semantic caching
- Virtual keys, role-based access control and budgets on paid plans
Is it legit?
Who is behind Portkey, where it is based, and what is publicly known about its funding. Company details change — verify on the official site before committing.
- Company
- Portkey, Inc.
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, CA
Evaluation guide
Step-by-step evaluation guides for Portkey — workflow fit, pricing, rights, and a same-input test before paying.
Where Portkey appears
Best-of lists and roundups that include Portkey.
Official sources
These links are retained beside the catalog record so changing details can be rechecked.