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AlternativesBest Portkey Alternatives in 2026
Looking for a Portkey alternative? Here are the strongest options, what each one costs, and how to switch without breaking production.
For a lower LLM bill, apicuts guarantees at least 20% lower all-in cost after its 10% fee, live in one day. For other needs, look at LiteLLM or OpenRouter.
On April 30, 2026, Palo Alto Networks announced it would acquire Portkey and make it the AI gateway in its Prisma AIRS platform (report).
Why teams look for a Portkey alternative
- You're a startup and unsure how pricing and focus will change after the acquisition.
- Your main problem is cost, not governance.
- You want results without configuring a gateway yourself.
Portkey is a good fit for teams whose main problem is governance and visibility across many AI apps. Here's what else is worth a look.
The best Portkey alternatives
A done-for-you LLM API gateway: we switch on caching, routing, batching, and prompt and output fixes for you.
Price: 10% of verified savings, no retainer. If your all-in bill isn't at least 20% lower after our fee, you pay nothing.
Setup: A 15-minute teardown, then live in one day with one line of code.
An open-source LLM proxy and SDK that you host yourself.
Price: Free to self-host under the MIT license. An enterprise tier with SSO, audit logs and custom SLAs is priced on request.
A model marketplace and router: one API key for 600+ models.
Price: Provider list prices with no markup, plus a 5.5% platform fee on credit purchases on its Standard plan. Bring-your-own-key usage is free up to $25,000 of list-price inference a month, then 5%.
A gateway for analytics, logging, caching, rate limiting, retries and model fallbacks.
Price: Core features are free. Credits bought through Unified Billing carry a 5% fee, and provider rates are passed through without markup.
One API for many models, built into Vercel.
Price: Provider list price with no markup and no platform fee on tokens, including with your own keys. Some optional features, such as custom reporting and team-wide zero data retention, cost extra.
An LLM observability platform with gateway features such as caching, rate limits and fallbacks.
Price: A free Hobby tier (10,000 requests), Pro at $79 a month, Team at $799 a month, usage-based charges on top, and custom Enterprise pricing.
How to choose
- Want the bill to fall? Pick the option that guarantees savings after its own fee.
- Want full control? Self-host an open-source proxy, and budget the engineering time.
- Want governance and logs? Pick a gateway built for observability.
- Want list-price access to many models? Pick a no-markup gateway.
How to migrate off Portkey
- List the models, keys and routing rules you use today.
- Point one non-critical service at the new endpoint. Most gateways, including apicuts, use the OpenAI API format, so it's a base URL and key change.
- Run both side by side and compare cost per successful request, latency and errors.
- Move the rest of your traffic once the numbers hold, and keep the old endpoint as a one-line rollback.
See the full migration guide.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Portkey alternative?
It depends on why you're switching. For a lower bill, apicuts guarantees at least 20% lower all-in cost after its fee. For other needs, LiteLLM and OpenRouter are strong options.
How long does it take to switch from Portkey?
With an OpenAI-compatible gateway, usually a day: change the base URL and key on one service, compare results, then move the rest.
How much does Portkey cost?
A free Developer tier (10K recorded logs a month), Production from $49 a month (100K logs), and custom Enterprise pricing. The open-source gateway can be self-hosted.
Sources: Portkey's pricing page, LiteLLM's pricing page, OpenRouter's pricing page, Cloudflare AI Gateway's pricing page, Vercel AI Gateway's pricing page, Helicone's pricing page. Checked October 30, 2026.
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