Portkey vs Cloudflare AI Gateway
Ten of fourteen models named Portkey first on the direct prompt; zero named Cloudflare AI Gateway. Portkey was named by fourteen of the fourteen models and Cloudflare AI Gateway by thirteen and Portkey carries 53 labels and Cloudflare AI Gateway 33, so the shares are not directly comparable.
Named in two categories this edition.
Named in two categories this edition.
Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts over all fourteen models, for a mid-market B2B company; rank is within the category; every quote names the model and the prompt it came from. Both figures come from the LLM gateways and observability page.
By framing
PortkeyFirst choices, of fourteen modelsCloudflare AI Gateway
Across every category in the November 2026 Edition, Portkey and Cloudflare AI Gateway were named in the same answer seventy-six times, of the 169 answers naming Portkey and the 102 naming Cloudflare AI Gateway. In those answers Cloudflare AI Gateway took the first choice two times and Portkey eighteen.
Every model, every framing
| Model | Direct | Paraphrase | Comparative | Budget-constrained | Scale-constrained | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | | | ||||
| GPT-5.4 mini | | | | |||
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | | | | | | |
| Perplexity Sonar | | | | | | |
| Grok 4.20 | | | | | ||
| Mistral Small | | | ||||
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | | | | | | |
| Llama 4 Maverick | | | ||||
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | | | | | | |
| Kimi K2 | | | | | | |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | | | | | ||
| MiniMax M2.5 | | | | |||
| GPT-6 Luna | | | | | ||
| Muse Glimmer 30B | | | | |
Portkey Cloudflare AI Gateway first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, Portkey on the left and Cloudflare AI Gateway on the right.The direct prompt
Portkey first, Cloudflare AI Gateway an alternative
10 of 14 modelsCloudflare AI Gateway was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.Neither was the first choice, one was named
4 of 14 modelsThe answer put something else first and named one of the two as an alternative.Bold names in an answer are the products the judge labeled a first choice; a model naming several gives each of them that label. The full answer text for every row is in the record.
By buyer segment
Portkey36%#1 of 9Cloudflare AI Gateway3%#5 of 9Portkey32%#2 of 9Cloudflare AI Gateway2%#5 of 9Portkey14%#3 of 10Cloudflare AI Gateway0%#8 of 10What the models said about Portkey
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Six of eight in this category shown.
“Avoid percentage-fee gateways until your monthly model spend exceeds $10,000–$35,000, as the fees become cost-prohibitive” MiniMax M2.5 · budget prompt · soft negative
“Providers like standard versions of OpenRouter or Portkey typically process logs across public infrastructure.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · negative prompt · soft negative
“It eliminates the subscription cost associated with commercial gateways (like Merge.dev or Portkey).” Qwen 3.7 Flash · budget prompt · soft negative
“the "best" LLM gateway typically comes down to a choice between the open-source standard, LiteLLM, or the observability-first solution, Portkey” Qwen 3.7 Flash · direct prompt · first choice
“consider starting with self-hosted open-source options (like Portkey's MIT-licensed tier or Envoy AI Gateway) where you control the data plane” Kimi K2 · negative prompt · first choice
“Portkey has long been the mid-market pick for teams that want guardrails, caching and logging in one product” Claude Haiku 4.5 · direct prompt · first choice
What the models said about Cloudflare AI Gateway
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Three of four in this category shown.
“For most budget-conscious companies, I'd start with Cloudflare AI Gateway using your own provider API keys (BYOK).” GPT-6 Luna · budget prompt · first choice
“if you already use Cloudflare and want a low-friction managed option; it can be cost-effective, but it's less of a full multi-provider control plane” GPT-5.4 mini · budget prompt · alternative
“Ideal if you already use Cloudflare. It offers powerful DDoS protection, rate limiting, and caching at the network edge.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · direct prompt · alternative
Comparisons are drawn for the top eight products in each category, each against each. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.