OpenRouter vs Portkey

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

Quick answer

OpenRouter is best for developers who want fast access to many models. Portkey is best for teams whose main problem is governance and visibility across many AI apps.

At a glance

	OpenRouter	Portkey
What it is	A model marketplace and router: one API key for 600+ models.	An AI gateway built for observability, guardrails and governance.
Pricing	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 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	Instant self-serve signup.	Self-serve signup, or self-host the open-source gateway.
Models	600+ models.	Many providers through one API.
Best for	Developers who want fast access to many models.	Teams whose main problem is governance and visibility across many AI apps.

2026 context

In August 2026 Stripe agreed to acquire OpenRouter (announcement). Terms were not disclosed.

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 OpenRouter if

A very large catalog behind one key.
Pay-as-you-go credits.
Enterprise plans with SSO and contractual SLAs.

Choose Portkey if

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

If your goal is a smaller bill

Neither OpenRouter 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 OpenRouter · APIcuts vs Portkey

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between OpenRouter and Portkey?

OpenRouter: A model marketplace and router: one API key for 600+ models. Portkey: An AI gateway built for observability, guardrails and governance.

Is OpenRouter cheaper than Portkey?

OpenRouter: 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%. 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 OpenRouter 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: OpenRouter's pricing page, Portkey's pricing page. Checked October 30, 2026.

Want us to find your 20%?

Book a free 15-minute API cost teardown. Bring last month's provider usage and we'll show you your biggest waste and the first fix we'd ship.

Get a Free 15-Minute API Cost Teardown