LiteLLM vs Portkey

A fair comparison of LiteLLM and Portkey, using each company's own pricing pages.

Quick answer

LiteLLM is best for platform teams that want to own and customize their gateway. Portkey is best for teams whose main problem is governance and visibility across many AI apps.

At a glance

	LiteLLM	Portkey
What it is	An open-source LLM proxy and SDK that you host yourself.	An AI gateway built for observability, guardrails and governance.
Pricing	Free to self-host under the MIT license. An enterprise tier with SSO, audit logs and custom SLAs is priced on request.	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.
Setup	Deploy and run it in your own cloud.	Self-serve signup, or self-host the open-source gateway.
Models	Any provider it supports, through your own keys.	Many providers through one API.
Best for	Platform teams that want to own and customize their gateway.	Teams whose main problem is governance and visibility across many AI apps.

2026 context

On March 24, 2026, two malicious LiteLLM releases (1.82.7 and 1.82.8) were on PyPI for about 40 minutes. The official Docker image was not affected (LiteLLM's security update).

On April 30, 2026, Palo Alto Networks announced it would acquire Portkey and make it the AI gateway in its Prisma AIRS platform (report).

Choose LiteLLM if

Full control and self-hosting.
Open source (MIT).
A large provider list.

Choose Portkey if

Guardrails and governance.
Detailed logs and metrics.
An open-source gateway.

If your goal is a smaller bill

Neither LiteLLM nor Portkey guarantees that your bill goes down. apicuts does: we switch on caching, routing, batching, and prompt and output fixes for you, and if your all-in cost isn't at least 20% lower after our 10% fee, you pay nothing. It uses the OpenAI API format, so it can also sit behind either of them.

APIcuts vs LiteLLM · APIcuts vs Portkey

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between LiteLLM and Portkey?

LiteLLM: An open-source LLM proxy and SDK that you host yourself. Portkey: An AI gateway built for observability, guardrails and governance.

Is LiteLLM cheaper than Portkey?

LiteLLM: Free to self-host under the MIT license. An enterprise tier with SSO, audit logs and custom SLAs is priced on request. Portkey: 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.

Is there an alternative to both LiteLLM and Portkey?

If cost is the priority, apicuts guarantees at least 20% lower all-in LLM costs after its fee, live in one day.

Sources: LiteLLM's pricing page, Portkey's pricing page. Checked October 30, 2026.

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