Portkey vs Kong AI Gateway
Both are llm gateways tools. Here is how they actually differ on price, billing model and deployment.
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.
Kong AI Gateway
AI routing built into Kong's established API gateway. The right answer if Kong already fronts your APIs and governance is the priority - an expensive one if you are adopting Kong just for this.
| Portkey | Kong AI Gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | LLM Gateways | LLM Gateways |
| Our rating | 4/5 | 3/5 |
| Starting price | $49/mo | Around $500/mo (Konnect) |
| Billing meter | No usage metering | No usage metering |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free self-hosting | Yes, free | Yes, free |
| Best for | 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 | Organisations already standardised on Kong for API management, where bringing LLM traffic under existing governance matters more than LLM-specific features. |
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 →Our verdict on Kong AI Gateway
Kong AI Gateway is a straightforward proposition that depends almost entirely on one question - do you already run Kong? If you do, this is close to an obvious choice. LLM traffic comes under the same policy, authentication, rate limiting and governance as the rest of your APIs, managed by the same platform team through the same control plane, rather than existing as a parallel system nobody owns. For an organisation where API governance is already a formal function, that consolidation is worth more than any LLM-specific feature. If you do not already run Kong, the calculation inverts sharply. Konnect is reported at roughly $500 to $2,500 a month against Cloudflare AI Gateway's $5 or self-hosted LiteLLM's infrastructure cost, and the LLM-specific capabilities are thinner than dedicated AI gateways. You would be adopting a substantial API management platform to solve a problem that cheaper, more focused tools solve directly.
Full Kong AI Gateway review →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main difference between Portkey and Kong AI 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 Kong AI Gateway: Organisations already standardised on Kong for API management, where bringing LLM traffic under existing governance matters more than LLM-specific features. Both sit in LLM Gateways, so the decision usually comes down to billing model and deployment rather than raw capability.
Which is cheaper, Portkey or Kong AI Gateway?
It depends entirely on your workload shape, because they meter differently - Portkey bills on no usage metering and Kong AI Gateway bills on no usage metering. Published starting prices are $49/mo and Around $500/mo (Konnect) 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 Portkey or Kong AI Gateway?
Portkey: Yes, free. Kong AI Gateway: Yes, free. Free self-hosting means no licence fee, not no cost - you still own the infrastructure, upgrades and on-call.