Keywords AI

LiteLLM vs Portkey

Compare LiteLLM and Portkey side by side. Both are tools in the LLM Gateways category.

Quick Comparison

LiteLLM
LiteLLM
Portkey
Portkey
CategoryLLM GatewaysLLM Gateways
PricingOpen SourceFreemium
Best ForEngineering teams who want an open-source, self-hosted LLM proxy for provider managementEngineering teams who need a reliable, observable gateway for production LLM applications
Websitelitellm.aiportkey.ai
Key Features
  • Open-source LLM proxy
  • OpenAI-compatible API for 100+ providers
  • Budget management and rate limiting
  • Self-hostable
  • Automatic retries and fallbacks
  • AI gateway with 200+ models
  • Automatic retries and fallbacks
  • Semantic caching
  • Guardrails and content filtering
  • Detailed cost and latency analytics
Use Cases
  • Self-hosted LLM gateway for data control
  • Standardizing LLM access across teams
  • Budget enforcement per team or project
  • Provider migration without code changes
  • Open-source LLM infrastructure
  • Enterprise LLM deployment with reliability
  • Multi-provider failover and load balancing
  • Cost reduction through semantic caching
  • Implementing safety guardrails in production
  • Centralized LLM access management

When to Choose LiteLLM vs Portkey

LiteLLM
Choose LiteLLM if you need
  • Self-hosted LLM gateway for data control
  • Standardizing LLM access across teams
  • Budget enforcement per team or project
Pricing: Open Source
Portkey
Choose Portkey if you need
  • Enterprise LLM deployment with reliability
  • Multi-provider failover and load balancing
  • Cost reduction through semantic caching
Pricing: Freemium

About LiteLLM

LiteLLM is an open-source LLM proxy that translates OpenAI-format API calls to 100+ LLM providers. It provides a standardized interface for calling models from Anthropic, Google, Azure, AWS Bedrock, and dozens more. LiteLLM is popular as a self-hosted gateway with features like spend tracking, rate limiting, and team management.

About Portkey

Portkey is an AI gateway that provides a unified API for 200+ LLMs with built-in reliability features including automatic retries, fallbacks, load balancing, and caching. The platform includes observability with detailed request logs, cost tracking, and performance analytics. Portkey also offers guardrails, access controls, and virtual keys for managing LLM usage across teams.

What is LLM Gateways?

Unified API platforms and proxies that aggregate multiple LLM providers behind a single endpoint, providing model routing, fallback, caching, rate limiting, cost optimization, and access control.

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