AI Gateway uses budget-based pricing: $99/month includes a $5,000 usage budget. Combined with intelligent routing that automatically uses cheaper models (Gemini Flash at $0.10/M vs GPT-4 at $30/M), your budget goes much further. Budget caps prevent bill shock—predictable costs, no surprises.
Portkey uses a platform-fee model: $49/month platform subscription, then you pay OpenAI/Anthropic/Google separately for all tokens consumed. No budget caps means potential for bill shock. No intelligent routing means you pay full price for every request, even simple ones.
| Monthly Usage | AI Gateway Cost | Portkey Cost | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M tokens | $99 | $49 + $2.50 = $51.50 | Portkey |
| 3M tokens | $99 | $49 + $7.50 = $56.50 | AI Gateway |
| 5M tokens | $99 + $70 = $169 | $49 + $12.50 = $61.50 | Portkey |
| 10M tokens | $99 + $245 = $344 | $49 + $25 = $74 | Portkey |
Verdict: AI Gateway wins at 2-4M tokens/month (most small-medium use cases). Portkey wins at 10M+ tokens/month or if you need very granular provider billing.
| Feature | AI Gateway | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-provider routing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automatic failover | ✓ | ✓ |
| Budget caps & alerts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-client tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Intelligent routing | ✓ Built-in | ✓ Config required |
| Usage budget included | ✓ $5,000/month | ✕ Pay separately |
| Advanced analytics | Basic dashboard | ✓ Comprehensive |
| Prompt management | ✕ | ✓ |
| A/B testing | ✕ | ✓ |
| Setup complexity | 5 minutes | 15-30 minutes |
✓ You use 2-4M tokens/month consistently
✓ You want predictable, all-inclusive pricing
✓ You prioritize simplicity over advanced features
✓ You're an agency billing clients and need clean invoicing
✓ You want to prevent bill shock with hard spending caps
✓ You use 10M+ tokens/month (lower per-token cost)
✓ You need advanced observability and analytics
✓ You want prompt versioning and A/B testing
✓ You have an enterprise team that needs collaboration features
✓ You're okay managing separate platform + provider billing
No—both are LLM proxy layers, so you can't route through AI Gateway AND Portkey simultaneously. You must choose one. However, you could use AI Gateway for production traffic and Portkey for development/testing if needed.
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