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Langfuse vs Portkey

A side-by-side comparison of Langfuse and Portkey, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.

Compared from listings verified as of

Langfuse

Observability

Open-source LLM observability. Self-hostable, OpenTelemetry-native.

View Langfuse

Portkey

Inference

AI gateway with observability, guardrails, and governance.

View Portkey

At a glance

Feature comparison of Langfuse and Portkey
AttributeLangfusePortkey
Category (differs)ObservabilityInference
PricingFREEMIUMFREEMIUM
LicenseOpen coreOpen core
DeploymentHybridHybrid
PlatformsAPI, WebAPI, Web
Model support (differs)Model-agnosticMulti-model
Vendor (differs)LangfusePortkey
Capabilities (differs)
  • LLM observability
  • LLM evaluation
  • Prompt management
  • MCP gateway / registry
  • LLM gateway / routing
  • Multi-model access
  • LLM observability
  • Prompt management
  • Guardrails

The honest brief

Langfuse

The MIT-licensed, self-hostable answer to LangSmith — own your observability data, framework-agnostic.

  • Own your observability data
  • Framework-agnostic, OTel-native
  • Tracing + evals + prompt mgmt
  • Transparent unit-based pricing
  • Self-host infra cost at scale
  • Less deep LangChain integration
  • Setup heavier than hosted-only

Portkey

Open-source AI gateway to 1,600+ LLMs with built-in observability, guardrails, and governance — self-host, hybrid, or managed cloud.

  • One API across many providers
  • Routing, caching, and fallbacks
  • Cost limits and PII redaction
  • Guardrails, RBAC, and MCP gateway
  • Acquired by Palo Alto Networks (closed 2025)
  • Future roadmap may shift to Prisma AIRS
  • Advanced governance gated to paid tiers

When to pick which

We found no distinguishing difference between Langfuse and Portkey on the signals we track — pricing, license, platforms, and model support. Their capability lists differ only in recorded depth — compare them above. Pick on team fit.

Langfuse detailsPortkey details