ModelBeat vs Portkey: two LLM gateways compared
ModelBeat and Portkey are both LLM gateways, sometimes called AI gateways or model routers: one API in front of many models, with fallbacks, retries and load balancing. Portkey offers an open-source gateway and hosted plans from free to enterprise. ModelBeat is a managed gateway with published per-token rates, and on-premises deployment under licence.
Last checked 27 October 2026 against Portkey’s own docs and pricing pages.
Portkey is a broad gateway-plus-observability product with a free tier and a published $49 monthly plan, plus guardrails and caching. ModelBeat is narrower on purpose: it scores each request before it runs, routes only to models it has vetted, and charges one flat rate, with no plan to choose.
| Topic | ModelBeat | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A managed LLM gateway and model router, drop-in compatible with the OpenAI API. | An AI gateway with routing and guardrails. The gateway is open source and can be run locally. |
| Routing | Scored on capability, cost and residency before inference. | Fallbacks, load balancing across keys, conditional routing on custom conditions, automatic retries, circuit breakers and timeouts. |
| Which models are available | A vetted set. Elytra probes and bands every model before ModelBeat will route to it. | Supported models through a universal API. The page does not describe a vetting step. |
| Caching | Not described on this page. | Simple caching on Production, simple and semantic on Enterprise. |
| Guardrails | Not described on this page. | Deterministic guardrails on Production. LLM and partner guardrails on Enterprise. |
| Hosting | Cloud, hybrid, or on-premises, all the same product. | Hosted plans, or self-host the open-source gateway. Private cloud and VPC hosting are listed under Enterprise. |
| Audit trail | Append-only audit log, kept seven years. | The pricing page does not list audit logs as a feature of any tier. |
| Price | Prepaid credit, no plan. Rates starting at $1.44 per million input tokens and $7.20 per million output, a published floor that can run higher depending on which model served the request. | Developer: free, 10k recorded logs a month. Production: $49 a month, 100k logs, then $9 per extra 100k. Enterprise: custom. |
Choose Portkey if
- You want gateway, observability and guardrails in one product, with a free tier to start.
- You need semantic caching or partner guardrails.
- You want to self-host an open-source gateway.
Choose ModelBeat if
- You want every request scored before it runs, from a vetted model set.
- You want published per-token rates, not a plan with a log quota.
- You want one product that runs as managed cloud, hybrid or on-premises.
Sources, read 27 October 2026
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