Portkey vs Helicone

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

Quick answer

Portkey is best for teams whose main problem is governance and visibility across many AI apps. Helicone is best for teams that need detailed logging and analytics.

At a glance

	Portkey	Helicone
What it is	An AI gateway built for observability, guardrails and governance.	An LLM observability platform with gateway features such as caching, rate limits and fallbacks.
Pricing	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.	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.
Setup	Self-serve signup, or self-host the open-source gateway.	Self-serve signup.
Models	Many providers through one API.	Works in front of the providers you use.
Best for	Teams whose main problem is governance and visibility across many AI apps.	Teams that need detailed logging and analytics.

2026 context

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

Mintlify acquired Helicone in March 2026, and Helicone moved to maintenance mode: fixes and new-model support, but no new features (report). Helicone's pricing page now says it is no longer part of Mintlify, with details to come.

Choose Portkey if

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

Choose Helicone if

Request logs, traces and analytics.
Alerts and reports.
SOC 2 and HIPAA on the Team plan.

If your goal is a smaller bill

Neither Portkey nor Helicone 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 Portkey · APIcuts vs Helicone

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Portkey and Helicone?

Portkey: An AI gateway built for observability, guardrails and governance. Helicone: An LLM observability platform with gateway features such as caching, rate limits and fallbacks.

Is Portkey cheaper than Helicone?

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. Helicone: 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.

Is there an alternative to both Portkey and Helicone?

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

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

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