— AI Infra / Gateway

Portkey

Last updated 2026-07-11 · Reviewed by ToolForge Editorial

The control plane for AI apps — one API to 200+ models with observability and fallbacks.

★ 4.6/5 · 200+ models, one API · Since 2023 · Free tier
Free free tier · usage pricing
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One API for every model

Portkey is an AI gateway: point your app at one OpenAI-compatible endpoint and route to 200+ models with automatic fallbacks, semantic caching, traces, and guardrails — so a provider outage never takes you down.

Who it's for: Engineering teams shipping AI apps across multiple models who need reliability, observability, and no lock-in.

Key features

Unified API 200+ models

Route to OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and open models through one OpenAI-compatible endpoint.

Fallbacks Reliability

Auto-failover between providers and load-balance by cost or latency.

Observability Traces + evals

Log every request, wire up evaluations, and spot regressions before users do.

Guardrails Safety + cache

Add semantic caching and input/output guards with a config, not code.

The honest take

✓ What works

  • One API kills provider lock-in
  • Fallbacks make apps resilient
  • Excellent tracing and evals
  • Free tier is generous
  • Fast to adopt — OpenAI-compatible

✗ What doesn't

  • Another layer to debug
  • Advanced features need the paid tier
  • Teams must learn its config model
  • Not needed for single-model apps

Verdict

Portkey is the control plane most production AI apps want once they touch more than one model. The unified API, fallbacks, and observability pay for themselves the first time a provider goes down.

💡 Transparency: This review contains affiliate links. If you sign up through our link, we may earn a commission at no cost to you. We only recommend tools we use ourselves. Full disclosure.

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