Portkey alternative
A Portkey Alternative for Teams Who Want the Gateway Run for Them
Portkey Production costs $49 a month for 100,000 recorded logs, plus $9 for each further 100,000 (October 2026). It is a capable gateway with a free tier worth using. Somebody on your side still has to configure it, read it, and act on what it shows.
With Cascadia you get
- Every request logged
- 90 days of searchable history
- Spend caps agreed with you
- Fallback when a provider fails
- A monthly report by application
- Your keys stay yours
Cascadia vs Portkey at a Glance
Three Questions That Decide It
Who will set the caps and read the logs?
How Far Back Do You Need to Look?
What Do You Want Each Month?
Side by Side
| Portkey | Cascadia | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free tier, Production from $49 a month | –$79 a month per organization |
| Logging | –Allowance per plan, logs past it not recorded | Every request logged |
| Log retention | –3 days free, 30 days on Production | 90 days, searchable |
| Caching | Simple and semantic on Production | Included, set up with you |
| Fallbacks | Automatic, configured by you | Configured and watched by us |
| Setup | –Well documented, you do it | Done with you on a call |
| Self-hosting | Open source gateway, free | ×Not offered |
| Monthly report | –Dashboards and alerts | Written, broken down by application |
Price
Logging
Log Retention
Caching
Fallbacks
Setup
Self-Hosting
Monthly Report
What Ships in the Standard Plan Here
Portkey gives you the controls and a log allowance sized to your plan. Deciding what the caps should be, noticing when a script misbehaves, and explaining the bill to whoever pays it all stay with you.
- The gateway put in front of the providers you already use
- Every request logged with the prompt, reply, model, and cost
- The application that made each call named in the log
- Spend caps and rate limits agreed with you, then enforced
- A warning before a budget is reached, not after
- Fallback and retries when a provider goes down
- Ninety days of history kept where you can search it
- A written monthly report, broken down by application
- Your provider keys and your logs stay yours
- One price of $79 a month per organization
Where Cascadia Goes Further
The gateway is the easy part. The part that saves money is a person choosing the caps, reading the logs, and telling you what changed.
Nobody on Your Side Has to Configure It
Portkey documents its configs and routing rules clearly. We write ours with you on a call, set the caps, and switch the gateway on only once you have agreed them.
History Long Enough to Compare Months
On Portkey Production, logs are kept for 30 days and metrics for 90 (October 2026). We keep 90 days of the requests themselves, so last quarter’s prompt and its cost are still there when the invoice gets questioned.
A Report a Finance Person Can Read
Each month you get what was spent, which application spent it, and what changed since the month before, written in plain words rather than left on a dashboard.
Caps Chosen with You, Then Held
A spend cap only helps if the number is right. We work out sensible limits for each application with you, enforce them at the gateway, and warn you before one is reached.
Who This Comparison Is For
Teams with an Engineer Who Wants the Controls
Portkey is built for developers. If someone on staff enjoys tuning routing rules and prompt templates, the free tier and the $49 Production plan are good value.
Businesses Where the Dashboard Goes Unopened
Observability only helps when somebody looks at it. Plenty of small teams set a gateway up once and stop checking it by the third week.
Anyone Who Has Outgrown a Log Allowance
On Portkey, requests keep flowing past the plan’s log limit, but logs beyond it are not recorded. That is a sensible design choice, and it still leaves a gap in the record.
Choose Portkey if
- An engineer on staff wants to own the gateway
- You need a free tier or a self-hosted option
- Prompt templates or VPC hosting matter to you
Choose Cascadia if
- Nobody has time to configure and watch it
- You want 90 days of requests kept
- You want a written report each month
Moving from Portkey in Four Steps
Your applications already call a single endpoint, so the move is mostly a change of address. The real work is agreeing the limits.
- 1
We Read What Portkey Is Doing Today
Which providers sit behind it, which configs, fallbacks, and caches are switched on, and what an ordinary month of traffic looks like.
- 2
We Agree the Caps and Rate Limits With You
Budgets per application, rate limits, and caching rules are settled on a call before anything changes, so nothing gets blocked by surprise.
- 3
Your Applications Point at the New Endpoint
An endpoint change and nothing more. Your provider keys stay yours, and Portkey can stay live until you are satisfied.
- 4
The First Full Picture Arrives Within a Week
After that, a written report lands each month showing what was spent, by which application, and anything that looked out of place.
What Clients Say About Working with Cascadia
“I’ve always dreaded website management, but Cascadia has done an incredible job with my WordPress site, making it one less thing for me to worry about.”
“I’ve worked with Cascadia for several years now. They are always ready to help in any way I ask and can implement my ideas with ease. A company that values their clients!”
“Cascadia has been great to work with! We recently needed some updates, and Cascadia was quick to get them completed! We highly recommend Cascadia Web Services.”
“Cascadia is very responsive and we’re happy with them as our primary IT vendor.”
“They do great work, been using for years. Prompt responses to requests.”
Ready to Move from Portkey?
Talk to us about your setupAsk us
Portkey Alternative Questions
Straight answers about switching, pricing, and what moves with you.
See AI GatewayStill have a question?
What is a Portkey alternative?
Any other way to put a control layer between your applications and the AI providers they call. That includes other gateway products such as Helicone, LiteLLM, and OpenRouter, and it includes managed services like this one, where the gateway is set up and watched for you.
How is Cascadia different from Portkey?
Portkey sells a gateway platform with a generous free tier and paid plans sized by recorded logs. We sell a gateway that we set up, cap, watch, and report on, for $79 a month per organization. For most small teams the software matters less than whether anybody reads what it records.
Is Portkey cheaper?
Often, yes. The Developer tier is free, Production starts at $49 a month, and the open source gateway costs nothing to host yourself (October 2026). If you have an engineer with time to run it, that is hard to beat. What our price adds is the person doing the running.
How long are logs kept?
Here, 90 days, with the prompt, the reply, the model, the cost, and the application that made the call. On Portkey, the Developer tier keeps logs for 3 days and Production for 30, with custom retention on Enterprise (October 2026).
Does Portkey do things you do not?
Yes. Prompt template management, guardrails on Production, role-based access control, and Enterprise options such as VPC hosting and SSO. If those are what you need, Portkey is the better fit and we will tell you so.
Do my applications need code changes?
Only the endpoint they call. If they point at Portkey now, they point at our gateway instead. Your provider keys stay yours, and you can point the applications back whenever you like.
Where does my data go?
Prompts and responses pass through the infrastructure the gateway runs on. We walk you through exactly what that means before anything is switched on, and if it is not acceptable we say so rather than sell it to you anyway. The logs are yours.
What happens when spending spikes?
The caps you agreed are enforced at the gateway and the rate limits hold per application. You hear from us before a budget is reached, and caching stops the same answer being paid for twice.
How quickly does setup start?
Within two business days, and the first full picture arrives within a week. The main thing we need is the list of providers your applications call and someone who can change an endpoint.
Ready to hand the gateway over?
$79 a month per organization, every request logged and kept for 90 days, and a person here who sets the caps with you and reports each month. It is also part of AI Pro at $189 a month if you would rather have the AI services on one invoice.