Portkey positions itself as an "AI gateway" — a unified API layer that sits between your code and your LLM providers. AgentBurn is purpose-built for cost tracking. They overlap on cost visibility but diverge on everything else.
What Portkey Does
Portkey is a full AI infrastructure layer: unified API across providers, automatic retries and fallbacks, load balancing, semantic caching, prompt management, and observability including cost tracking. It's a thick middleware layer.
What AgentBurn Does
AgentBurn does one thing deeply: cost intelligence. Per-agent tracking, budget alerts, provider breakdowns, token analytics, and cost forecasting. It doesn't proxy your calls, manage your prompts, or handle failover.
The Trade-Off
| Dimension | AgentBurn | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Cost tracking | AI gateway |
| Setup complexity | Low (add API calls) | Medium (replace base URLs) |
| Vendor lock-in | None (MIT, event-based) | Medium (gateway dependency) |
| Non-LLM cost tracking | Yes | No |
| Provider fallback | No | Yes |
| Prompt management | No | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Enterprise only |
| Free tier | Unlimited (self-hosted) | 10K requests/month |
When to Choose AgentBurn
You already have your LLM integration working. You don't want a gateway middleman. You need cost visibility across your entire agent stack (LLMs + compute + tools). You want to self-host.
When to Choose Portkey
You're building from scratch and want a unified API layer. You need automatic provider fallback and load balancing. Cost tracking is a secondary concern — you mainly need reliability and prompt management.
Using Both
Some teams use Portkey as their gateway and AgentBurn for cost tracking. Portkey handles reliability; AgentBurn handles the budget. There's no conflict — they operate at different layers.