OpenRouter vs Portkey
Both are llm gateways tools. Here is how they actually differ on price, billing model and deployment.
OpenRouter
A managed gateway to 500+ models with no subscription, charging 5.5% on top of provider prices. Two details to know - there are no volume discounts, and your credits expire after a year of non-use.
Portkey
An open-source LLM gateway that routes to 1,600+ models with fallbacks, caching, budgets and guardrails. The gateway self-hosts free under Apache 2.0 - but real logging, traces and analytics require the managed paid tier.
| OpenRouter | Portkey | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | LLM Gateways | LLM Gateways |
| Our rating | 4/5 | 4/5 |
| Starting price | 5.5% markup | $49/mo |
| Billing meter | markup-pct | No usage metering |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free self-hosting | No or paid tier only | Yes, free |
| Best for | Small teams and prototypes trying many models without wanting infrastructure, and anyone whose monthly provider spend stays below roughly $5,000 where the markup costs less than running a gateway. | Teams that want one gateway to route, cache, budget and guardrail across many LLM providers, and are fine paying for the managed tier once they need real observability |
Our verdict on OpenRouter
OpenRouter is the fastest way to get access to a very large number of models, and for small teams it is close to unbeatable on convenience. One key, one OpenAI-compatible endpoint, 500+ models, no subscription, and 27 community-subsidised models that are genuinely free. If you are evaluating which model suits a problem, the ability to switch between hundreds by changing a string is worth real money in engineering time alone. The economics turn against you as you grow, and the reason is structural. The 5.5% markup carries no volume discounts, so the fee scales indefinitely with your spend while delivering nothing additional - at $50,000 a month that is $2,750 every month for the same service you got at $1,000. Two smaller details are worth knowing. Credits expire after one year of non-use, which is unusual enough to catch people out. And there is no self-hosted option, so their availability is your availability, with no fallback you control.
Full OpenRouter review →Our verdict on Portkey
Portkey is the strongest LLM gateway in this set, and the open-source core is a genuinely good, free, self-hostable proxy for routing, fallbacks and guardrails. The catch is where the value migrates. Self-host gives you routing for free, but the logs, traces and analytics that most teams actually adopt an observability tool for live on the managed tier. Know that split before you plan a self-hosted deployment, or you'll stand up the gateway and then discover the dashboard you wanted is a paid feature.
Full Portkey review →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main difference between OpenRouter and Portkey?
OpenRouter: Small teams and prototypes trying many models without wanting infrastructure, and anyone whose monthly provider spend stays below roughly $5,000 where the markup costs less than running a gateway. Portkey: Teams that want one gateway to route, cache, budget and guardrail across many LLM providers, and are fine paying for the managed tier once they need real observability Both sit in LLM Gateways, so the decision usually comes down to billing model and deployment rather than raw capability.
Which is cheaper, OpenRouter or Portkey?
It depends entirely on your workload shape, because they meter differently - OpenRouter bills on markup-pct and Portkey bills on no usage metering. Published starting prices are 5.5% markup and $49/mo respectively, but those numbers are not comparable until you apply them to the same traffic. Use our cost calculator to model both against your own request volume and span count.
Can I self-host OpenRouter or Portkey?
OpenRouter: No or paid tier only. Portkey: Yes, free. Free self-hosting means no licence fee, not no cost - you still own the infrastructure, upgrades and on-call.