LiteLLM vs Portkey
Facts come from each vendor's own pages; download numbers are the headline package of each tool in 2026-W40.
| Fact | LiteLLM | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| PyPI downloads, week (rank) | 22,710,323 (#1)litellm | 765,740 (#9)portkey-ai |
| npm downloads, week (rank) | no npm SDK | 280,520 (#6)portkey-ai |
| GitHub stars (rank) | 60,298 (#1)BerriAI/litellm | 13,144 (#10)Portkey-AI/gateway |
| PyPI series (12 weeks) | ||
| npm series (12 weeks) | no npm SDK | |
| Categories | Gateways with observability | Gateways with observability, Tracing & observability, Guardrails & safety, Prompt management |
| Status | Generally available | Generally available |
| Licence | MIT (open core) | MIT (open core) |
| Self-host | Yes | Yes |
| OpenTelemetry | Exporter / bridge | Native (OTLP) |
| Pricing model | contact | usage |
| Entry price | Contact sales; Open Source $0 self-hosted; Enterprise is annual, sized to usage, price not published ('Talk to sales') | $49/mo; Production plan $49/month with 100k recorded logs per month, +$9 per additional 100k requests; Developer plan free forever (10K requests); Enterprise custom |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Measurability | Measured (mapped SDK packages) | Measured (mapped SDK packages) |
| Sources | pricing · licence · self-host · OTel (checked 2026-10-07) | pricing · licence · self-host · OTel (checked 2026-10-07) |
More downloads means more package installs (including CI and dependencies), not a better product. See the methodology.