Comparison

Haystack vs Portkey

On the evidence we track, Portkey leads this comparison with a composite score of 79/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.

Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLMarkdown is open. JSON and GraphQL need a free key.
Haystack66
★Portkey79
Score
vioscaleAI score
Haystack66 / 100medium · 68%
Portkey79 / 100medium · 74%
Pricing
Free tier
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Model
Haystackfreemium
Portkeyfreemium
Price level
Haystacklow
Portkeymid
Starting price
Haystack–
Portkey$49
Transparent
Haystack✗
Portkey✓
Integrations
Count
Haystack9
Portkey1,600
Security
Certifications
Gdpr
Haystack–
Portkey✓
Hipaa
Haystack–
Portkey✓
Iso27001
Haystack–
Portkey✓
Scorecard
Haystack9.4
Portkey–
Soc2
Haystack–
Portkey✓
Reliability
Status page
Haystack–
Portkey✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Haystack237
Portkey–
Github stars
Haystack26,738
Portkey–
Package downloads weekly
Haystack121,930
Portkey–
Activity
Commits last 30d
Haystack100
Portkey–
Release
Cadence days
Haystack2
Portkey–
History
Haystack20 items
Portkey–
License
Spdx
HaystackApache-2.0
Portkey–
Language
Primary
HaystackPython
Portkey–
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
Haystack6 items
Portkey6 items

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for mlops & llmops tools. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Core
Tool role
HaystackEnd-to-end ML platform
PortkeyModel gateway / router
Deployment
Self-hostable / OSS core
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Managed cloud available
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
On-prem / VPC deployment
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Observability
LLM tracing / observability
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Evaluation (offline / LLM-judge / human)
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Dev
Prompt management + versioning
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Tracking
Experiment tracking / model registry
Haystack-
Portkey✓
Serving
Model serving / inference endpoint
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Interop
OpenTelemetry / OpenLLMetry compatible
Haystack✓
Portkey-
Framework-agnostic
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Gateway
Multi-provider model support
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Data
No-train-on-customer-data guarantee
HaystackUnknown
PortkeyUnknown

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Haystack

A Python-based orchestration framework for building production-ready AI applications with modular pipelines, agent workflows, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Provides explicit control over retrieval, reasoning, memory, tools, and generation components, supporting everything from simple semantic search to complex multi-step agent systems.

Independently observed

Portkey

Leader

Platform providing API gateway functionality, observability with logging and traces, safety guardrails, access governance, and prompt version management for teams deploying AI applications at scale.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Haystack

HybridFree tier

Free open-source core with paid enterprise support available

  • Open SourceFree
  • EnterpriseContact sales
as of verify ↗

Portkey

Leader
from $49/moHybridFree tier

Free tier with 10k logs/month. Production at $49/month with usage overages. Enterprise custom pricing for compliance-focused organizations.

  • DeveloperFree
    • Universal API & Key Management
    • Routing, Fallbacks, Load Balancing, Retries
    • 3 Prompt Templates with Playground, Versioning, Variables
    • Logs, Traces, Feedback, Custom Metadata, Filters
    • Simple Caching
    • +3 more
  • Production$49/month + $9 per 100k request overage
    • Universal API, Fallbacks, Load Balancing, Retries
    • Unlimited Prompt Templates with Playground, API Deployment, Versioning, Variables
    • Logs, Traces, Feedback, Metadata, Filters, Alerts
    • LLM & Partner Guardrails
    • Role-Based Access Control, Service Account API Keys
    • +3 more
  • EnterpriseContact sales
    • Custom retention periods for logs and metrics
    • Advanced Evaluation Templates with custom guardrail hooks
    • Role-Based Access Control, SSO (Okta), Granular Budget & Rate Limits
    • Private Cloud Deployment, VPC Hosting, Data Export to Data Lakes
    • SOC2 Type 2, GDPR, HIPAA compliance certifications
    • +3 more
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
CLI
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Self-hosted
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
On-premise
Haystack✓
Portkey✓
Hybrid
Haystack✗
Portkey✓

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

In common (4)
  • OpenAI
  • Anthropic
  • Mistral
  • Claude

Haystack

28 total - 24 not shared
  • Hugging Face
  • Weaviate
  • Pinecone
  • Elasticsearch
  • AstraDB
  • Apify
  • ReadMe
  • Azure OpenAI
  • Datadog
  • OpenTelemetry
  • SerperDev
  • SearchApi
  • Cohere
  • AWS Bedrock
  • FAISS
  • AWS SageMaker
  • OpenSearch
  • Google Colab
  • MCP servers
  • Amazon Bedrock
  • Amazon S3
  • Meta
  • Stability AI
  • AI21 Labs
Independently observed

Portkey

Leader
16 total - 12 not shared
  • Google Cloud (Vertex AI, Gemini)
  • Azure
  • AWS
  • GCP
  • Langgraph
  • CrewAI
  • Strands Agents
  • Google ADK
  • Google
  • MongoDB
  • Vertex AI
  • Claude Code
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Haystack or Portkey: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.