Comparison

Portkey vs vLLM

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.
★Portkey79
vLLM64
Score
vioscaleAI score
Portkey79 / 100medium · 74%
vLLM64 / 100medium · 58%
Pricing
Free tier
Portkey✓
vLLM✓
Model
Price level
Portkeymid
vLLMfree
Starting price
Portkey$49
vLLM–
Transparent
Portkey✓
vLLM✓
Integrations
Count
Portkey1,600
vLLM29
Reliability
Status page
Portkey✓
vLLM–
Adoption
Dependent repos
Portkey–
vLLM5
Github stars
Portkey–
vLLM93,797
Package downloads weekly
Portkey–
Activity
Commits last 30d
Portkey–
vLLM100
Release
Cadence days
Portkey–
vLLM12
History
Portkey–
License
Spdx
Portkey–
Language
Primary
Portkey–
vLLMPython
Market
Content
Faq
Portkey6 items

Capabilities

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

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

What each one is

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

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

vLLM

A production-grade inference engine designed for efficient serving of large language models with support for distributed deployment, GPU acceleration, and multi-model endpoints.

Independently observed

Pricing

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

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 ↗

vLLM

Open sourceFree tier
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

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

Integrations

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

In common (1)
  • OpenAI

Portkey

Leader
16 total - 15 not shared
  • Google Cloud (Vertex AI, Gemini)
  • Azure
  • AWS
  • GCP
  • Langgraph
  • CrewAI
  • Strands Agents
  • Google ADK
  • Anthropic
  • Claude
  • Mistral
  • Google
  • MongoDB
  • Vertex AI
  • Claude Code
Independently observed

vLLM

33 total - 32 not shared
  • Hugging Face
  • NVIDIA Dynamo
  • OpenAI-compatible API
  • Anthropic Messages API
  • FlashAttention
  • FlashInfer
  • CUTLASS
  • torch.compile
  • gRPC
  • GPTQ
  • AWQ
  • GGUF
  • ModelOpt
  • TorchAO
  • OpenAI API
  • Kubernetes
  • PyTorch
  • Ray
  • OpenTelemetry
  • Prometheus
  • FastAPI
  • Transformers
  • Outlines
  • Google Cloud TPU
  • +8 more
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Portkey or vLLM: 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.