Agentic Index
LiteLLM vs Portkey (2026)
The two gateways most often compared, split by what sits around the routing. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
LiteLLM is the open source standard: one OpenAI compatible interface to more than a hundred providers with keys, budgets and routing, free to self host, enterprise from around 250 dollars a month. Portkey wraps a similar gateway in governance, adding MCP Gateway support, audit logs and enterprise compliance, free for development and 49 dollars a month for production, documenting 8 of 14 against LiteLLM's 7. Same core job, and Portkey is the one that answers a security review.
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. LiteLLM and Portkey are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 969 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose LiteLLM if
- Self hosting is the requirement and an open source gateway you fully control is the point.
- Provider breadth decides it: more than a hundred providers behind one interface.
- Your team lives in Python and wants the SDK as much as the proxy.
Choose Portkey if
- Governance is the reason for the gateway: audit logs and compliance are what you are buying.
- MCP Gateway support is part of your architecture already.
- Production pricing at 49 dollars a month beats a self hosted deployment you have to operate.
| At a glance | LiteLLM | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Agent infrastructure | Agent infrastructure |
| Entry price | Open source, free to self host; Enterprise from about $250/mo (contact sales) | Free Dev (10K logs/mo) · Production $49/mo · open source gateway |
| Free / trial | MIT licensed open source core, free to self host | Free Dev plan (10K recorded logs/mo) |
| Pricing confidence | public partial | public exact |
| Feature | L LiteLLM |
P Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | L LiteLLM |
P Portkey |
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Open source, free to self host; Enterprise from about $250/mo (contact sales) | Free Dev (10K logs/mo) · Production $49/mo · open source gateway |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public, partial | Public, exact |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
license and self hosted infrastructure | usage |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
High variable cost | Medium variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tier
|
Free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Mixed | Mixed |
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