Portkey vs Helicone
Ten of fourteen models named Portkey first on the direct prompt; zero named Helicone. Portkey was named by fourteen of the fourteen models and Helicone by seven and Portkey carries 53 labels and Helicone 16, so the shares are not directly comparable.
Named in two categories this edition.
Named in one category 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 modelsHelicone
Across every category in the November 2026 Edition, Portkey and Helicone were named in the same answer forty-six times, of the 169 answers naming Portkey and the 58 naming Helicone. In those answers Helicone took the first choice three times and Portkey thirteen.
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 Helicone first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, Portkey on the left and Helicone on the right.The direct prompt
Portkey first, Helicone not the choice
10 of 14 modelsHelicone 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 9Helicone10%#3 of 9Portkey32%#2 of 9Helicone4%#4 of 9What 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 Helicone
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Four of five in this category shown.
“Managed/third-party hosted gateways with weak privacy controls (e.g., some observability-focused ones like early PromptLayer or Helicone variants)” Grok 4.20 · negative prompt · soft negative
“My top pick for a typical mid-sized B2B company: Start with Helicone.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · paraphrase prompt · first choice
“I recommend Helicone as the best all-around choice” Kimi K2 · paraphrase prompt · first choice
“Excellent observability, caching, and cost analytics | Stronger on monitoring than routing; paid plans for advanced usage” Grok 4.20 · budget 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.