Portkey vs OpenRouter
Ten of fourteen models named Portkey first on the direct prompt; one named OpenRouter. Both were named by all fourteen models and Portkey carries 53 labels and OpenRouter 41, 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 modelsOpenRouter
Across every category in the November 2026 Edition, Portkey and OpenRouter were named in the same answer eighty-seven times, of the 169 answers naming Portkey and the 120 naming OpenRouter. In those answers OpenRouter took the first choice seven times and Portkey twenty-four.
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 OpenRouter first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, Portkey on the left and OpenRouter on the right.The direct prompt
Portkey first, OpenRouter an alternative
10 of 14 modelsOpenRouter was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.OpenRouter first, Portkey an alternative
1 of 14 modelsPortkey was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.Neither was the first choice, one was named
3 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 9OpenRouter7%#4 of 9Portkey14%#3 of 10OpenRouter0%#10 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 OpenRouter
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Six of eight in this category shown.
“The one I would not recommend for a mid-market B2B company is OpenRouter” DeepSeek V4 Flash · direct prompt · hard negative
“"avoid OpenRouter for anything with sensitive/PII data" [4]” Muse Glimmer 30B · negative prompt · hard negative
“Exercise caution with OpenRouter, Portkey, Vercel AI Gateway, and similar services when prompts contain personal, regulated, proprietary, or agent data.” Perplexity Sonar · negative prompt · soft negative
“Best default for most mid-market teams: OpenRouter” GPT-5.4 mini · direct prompt · first choice
“Well‑documented, transparent marketplaces that expose provider lists, pricing, and model performance data (e.g., OpenRouter, Portkey AI Gateway)” GLM 4.7 FlashX · negative prompt · alternative
“Choose Cloudflare or OpenRouter if you want zero infrastructure maintenance and fast deployment out of the box.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · comparative 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.