Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Portkey (2026)
Updated March 10, 2026
Overview
Cloudflare AI Gateway is a proxy for AI API traffic that provides caching, rate limiting, analytics, and logging for LLM requests. Running on Cloudflare's global edge network, it reduces latency and costs by caching repeated requests. Free to use on all Cloudflare plans.
Portkey is an open-source AI gateway, now Palo Alto Networks' Prisma AIRS AI Gateway. Compare its pricing, features, pros and cons, and alternatives.
Key features
Core capabilities each platform advertises.
- Edge-deployed AI gateway
- Caching and rate limiting
- Usage analytics
- Provider failover
- Cloudflare network integration
- Unified API across major providers
- Retries, fallbacks, and load balancing
- Simple and semantic caching
- Deterministic and LLM guardrails
- Request logs with cost and latency analytics
Strengths and tradeoffs
What each tool does well, and the limitations to keep in mind.
Pros
- Core features free with Cloudflare plans—no per-call gateway fees
- Tightly integrated with Cloudflare global network for low-latency routing
- One-line integration for major LLM providers
- Built-in caching, rate limiting, and fallbacks improve reliability
Cons
- Adds 10-50ms proxy latency to every request
- Lacks token-level tracing and prompt analysis
- Strict log retention caps require manual management at scale
- No enterprise governance features like RBAC or audit trails
Pros
- Open-source, self-hostable gateway
- Routing, caching, and guardrails in one gateway
- Requests keep flowing past the free log limit
- RBAC and semantic caching on the $49 Production plan
Cons
- Now part of Palo Alto Networks as Prisma AIRS AI Gateway
- Three-day log retention on the free plan
- Requests past the log cap go unrecorded on the free plan
- Semantic caching and LLM guardrails require Production
Cloudflare AI or Portkey — which should you choose?
Choose Cloudflare AI if you wantChoose if you want
- Edge caching for AI API calls
- Rate limiting AI usage per user
- Cost management for AI APIs
- Global AI traffic management
- Cloudflare ecosystem AI integration
Choose Portkey if you wantChoose if you want
- Multi-provider failover and load balancing
- Cutting cost through caching
- Guardrails on production traffic
- Centralized LLM access management
Compare Cloudflare AI Gateway and Portkey on your own traffic
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