AI Gateway HQ vs Portkey
The question that decides it: Do you need a hosted governance boundary or the option to run the gateway yourself?
Our verdict
Evaluate AI Gateway HQ for hosted budget reservations and metadata-based evidence. Evaluate Portkey when the choice between managed and self-hosted deployment is central to your requirements.
Why
Both belong on a governance shortlist, but the deployment choices differ. AI Gateway HQ currently offers a hosted service; its private-deployment design engagement is not a ready-to-run self-host license. Portkey has managed and self-hosted options. Confirm the edition and operational responsibilities before treating them as interchangeable. AI Gateway HQ pricing; Portkey gateway documentation.
AI Gateway HQ’s Flex meter charges per successful request, separately from BYOK inference. Portkey’s catalogue records hosted tiers and request-related charges. Compare the actual plan and request volume; zero token markup does not establish zero gateway cost.
AI Gateway HQ describes metadata-only ordinary request evidence. Portkey’s catalogue records full-content logging by default. Review configuration, caching, exports and upstream terms for either service: default logging is not a universal zero-retention guarantee. AI Gateway HQ privacy notice.
Which one, concretely
Choose AI Gateway HQ if
- You want to evaluate hosted organization and workload-key budget reservations
- You prefer ordinary request evidence without a prompt archive
Choose Portkey if
- You need a documented self-hosted gateway option
- You want to evaluate Portkey’s gateway and observability together
What catches people out
- AI Gateway HQ does not currently claim SOC 2 certification or a general-availability SLA.
- AI Gateway HQ enforcing output inspection requires non-streaming requests.
- Confirm plan-specific charges and logging settings for both products.
Side by side
Interpret these fields: How much does an LLM gateway lock you in? · LLM gateway compliance: SOC 2, HIPAA and evidence · How LLM gateway failover actually works
4 of 4 fields differ, marked with a dot. Every figure links to the vendor page it came from. Blank values read Not published rather than No — silence from a vendor is not a negative answer.
| Field | AI Gateway HQ | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of leaving Derived score, higher is easier | 64/84 Some work to leave | 100/100 Easy to leave |
| How pricing works, briefly Pricing model detail | Flex usage meter or Company subscription; provider inference is separate. Portfolio has a separate sponsor boundary. | Free OSS self-host + free Dev tier + flat monthly platform fee ($49/mo Pro per docs) + request overage + Enterprise quote. Public pricing page shows tiers without dollar amounts and describes the free allowance as '10k recorded logs' per month; docs comparison lists 'Pro $49/Month' with '10k requests/month'. These two framings contradict. |
| What they keep if you change nothing Logging default | Metadata only, not content | Yes — prompts and replies |
| Blocks personal data in prompts PII / DLP enforcement | Not documented | Can block the request |
| Traces you can take elsewhere Distributed tracing | Not documented | OpenTelemetry |
for AI Gateway HQ and for Portkey. Want more fields, or a third option in the mix? Open these two in the full comparison tool.
Common questions
Can AI Gateway HQ be self-hosted like Portkey?
Its published private-deployment offer is a design engagement, not a generally available self-host license. Portkey has a self-hosted option; verify the required edition.