Comparison

Kong AI Gateway 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.
Kong AI Gateway53
★Portkey79
Score
vioscaleAI score
Kong AI Gateway53 / 100low · 34%
Portkey79 / 100medium · 74%
Pricing
Free tier
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Model
Kong AI Gatewayfreemium
Portkeyfreemium
Price level
Kong AI Gatewaylow
Portkeymid
Starting price
Kong AI Gateway–
Portkey$49
Transparent
Kong AI Gateway✗
Portkey✓
Integrations
Count
Kong AI Gateway11
Portkey1,600
Security
Certifications
Kong AI Gateway–
Gdpr
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Hipaa
Kong AI Gateway–
Portkey✓
Iso27001
Kong AI Gateway–
Portkey✓
Soc2
Kong AI Gateway–
Portkey✓
Reliability
Status page
Kong AI Gateway–
Portkey✓
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
Kong AI Gateway6 items
Portkey6 items

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for llm gateways. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Capabilities
Openai compatible API
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Automatic failover
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Routing strategy
Kong AI GatewayCustom
PortkeyLoad based
Caching
Kong AI GatewaySemantic
PortkeySemantic
Virtual key management
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Budget spend controls
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Rate limiting
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Guardrails moderation
Kong AI GatewayBuilt in
PortkeyVia integration
Request cost observability
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Streaming support
Kong AI Gateway-
Portkey-
Deployment model
Kong AI GatewaySelf hosted
PortkeyManaged SaaS
Open source
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Pricing model
Kong AI GatewayOpen source self host
Portkeypay_per_10k_traces

What each one is

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

Kong AI Gateway

A cloud-native gateway platform that manages traffic between applications and large language model providers, offering multi-provider routing with automatic failover, semantic caching, cost visibility, compliance guardrails, and audit logging—without requiring changes to application code.

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.

Kong AI Gateway

HybridFree tier
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
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Linux
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✗
CLI
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Self-hosted
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
On-premise
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓
Hybrid
Kong AI Gateway✓
Portkey✓

Integrations

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

In common (3)
  • OpenAI
  • Anthropic
  • Mistral

Kong AI Gateway

28 total - 25 not shared
  • AWS Bedrock
  • GCP Gemini
  • Azure AI
  • Databricks
  • Huggingface
  • Llama
  • AWS Bedrock Guardrails
  • Azure Content Safety
  • Google Cloud Model Armor
  • Prometheus
  • Datadog
  • Grafana
  • Git
  • CertManager
  • Google Cloud Gemini
  • Hugging Face
  • Docusign
  • Kafka
  • AWS Kinesis
  • Google Pub/Sub
  • RabbitMQ
  • Amazon Kinesis
  • Redis
  • Google Gemini
  • +1 more
Independently observed

Portkey

Leader
16 total - 13 not shared
  • Google Cloud (Vertex AI, Gemini)
  • Azure
  • AWS
  • GCP
  • Langgraph
  • CrewAI
  • Strands Agents
  • Google ADK
  • Claude
  • Google
  • MongoDB
  • Vertex AI
  • Claude Code
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Kong AI Gateway 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.