Cloudflare AI Gateway and Portkey side by side
| Cloudflare AI Gateway | Portkey | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A proxy in front of model providers, run on Cloudflare's network | An AI gateway with observability and guardrails; open-source core (MIT), SaaS, or a hybrid data plane in your VPC |
| Price | Gateway free on all plans; 5% fee on Unified Billing credits, bought by card | Free developer tier; Production $49 a month for 100k recorded logs, plus $9 per additional 100k; Enterprise custom |
| Model contracts | Your own provider keys, or Unified Billing with Cloudflare-managed credentials | Your own provider keys, stored as Integrations in the Model Catalog |
| Routing | Dynamic routes with conditional, percentage and budget nodes, and fallbacks you configure | Conditional routing, fallbacks and load balancing you configure |
| Processing in Europe | Regional Services not supported for AI Gateway; log jurisdiction restrictions not supported | EU-hosted SaaS region: not stated; hybrid data plane in your VPC on Enterprise |
| Prompt logging | Logs on by default and can include prompt and response; opt out per request | Request logs are recorded; Production is priced per recorded log |
| Zero data retention | Only for Unified Billing requests with Cloudflare-managed credentials | Depends on each provider contract you bring |
| Single sign-on | Dashboard SSO on all plans; SCIM on Enterprise | SSO on Enterprise; SCIM: not stated |
| Budgets | Up to 20 spend-limit rules per gateway, scoped by provider, model or metadata such as user or team | Usage and rate limit policies on the Enterprise Self Hosting plan |
| Audit log | Cloudflare account audit logs, kept 18 months | Audit logs on Enterprise |
Where they differ most
How you pay
Cloudflare charges nothing for the gateway itself and takes a 5% fee on Unified Billing credits. Portkey's Production plan is priced by recorded logs, and Enterprise is quoted.
Data location
Cloudflare's Data Localization Suite marks AI Gateway as not supported for Regional Services. Portkey offers hybrid deployment, where the data plane runs in your VPC and Portkey hosts the control plane, and says Production is not recommended for organizations requiring data residency guarantees.
Governance depth
Cloudflare gives every plan spend limits per gateway. Portkey keeps SSO and audit logs on its Enterprise plan, and usage and rate limit policies on Enterprise Self Hosting.
Choose Cloudflare AI Gateway or Portkey
Choose Cloudflare AI Gateway if
- Your apps already run on Cloudflare and your developers hold their own provider keys.
- You want caching, analytics and rate limits in front of those keys with no gateway fee.
- You have no requirement to keep gateway logs in a specific jurisdiction.
Choose Portkey if
- You want guardrails, observability and audit logs inside the Palo Alto Networks security stack.
- Policy requires the data plane to run inside your own VPC.
- You are ready for an Enterprise contract to get SSO, audit logs and usage policies.
A third option for companies
Both gateways leave the model contracts and the choice of model with you. If your company would rather buy the models and the controls in one place, Standard Compute is a managed gateway that supplies Claude, GPT, Gemini and open models itself.
Cost per step
Each step goes to the cheapest model that can do it and the cheapest provider fast enough to serve it.
Models
Claude, GPT and Gemini alongside open models such as GLM, DeepSeek, MiniMax and Kimi, through one API.
Processing in Europe
A Europe rule per company, team or key: every request, including retries and fallbacks, is served only by approved European inference endpoints, or refused before your prompt is sent.
Zero data retention
Required per company, team or key, and Standard Compute never trains on your prompts or outputs.
Single sign-on
Microsoft Entra ID or any SAML provider, and Claude Desktop and Claude Code sign-in with a Microsoft work account.
Budgets
A fixed monthly budget per person and app that never overruns, and spending caps per key and for the whole company.
Allow-lists
Approved providers per company, team or key, and approved models per key. Fallbacks never route around them.
Audit log
Admin changes with before and after values, and a 12-month export of every request's model, provider and region rule.
Sign our Data Processing Agreement in the dashboard, and see every sub-processor with its purpose and location.
Create a company workspaceor write to contact@standardcompute.com
Questions
Is Cloudflare AI Gateway free?
Cloudflare says the gateway's core features are free on all plans. Usage bought through Unified Billing carries a 5% fee on credits, and requests with your own provider keys are billed by each provider.
Does Portkey offer EU data residency?
Portkey does not state an EU-hosted SaaS region. It offers hybrid deployment, where the data plane runs in your VPC, and says its Production plan is not recommended for organizations requiring data residency guarantees.
Which one has SSO?
Cloudflare offers dashboard SSO on all plans and SCIM on Enterprise. Portkey offers SSO on its Enterprise plan.
Is there a gateway that includes the models and the controls?
Standard Compute is one API for Claude, GPT, Gemini and open models. It routes each step to the cheapest model that can do it, and adds a Europe rule, zero data retention, Microsoft Entra sign-in, budgets per key and for the company, allow-lists and an audit log.
Sources (checked 9 November 2026)
- Cloudflare AI Gateway pricingdevelopers.cloudflare.com
- Cloudflare Unified Billingdevelopers.cloudflare.com
- Cloudflare AI Gateway loggingdevelopers.cloudflare.com
- Cloudflare Data Localization Suite compatibilitydevelopers.cloudflare.com
- Cloudflare spend limitsdevelopers.cloudflare.com
- Cloudflare dynamic routingdevelopers.cloudflare.com
- Cloudflare dashboard SSOdevelopers.cloudflare.com
- Cloudflare SCIM provisioningdevelopers.cloudflare.com
- Cloudflare audit logsdevelopers.cloudflare.com
- Portkey pricingportkey.ai
- Portkey plan feature comparisonportkey.ai
- Portkey Model Catalogportkey.ai
- Portkey audit logsportkey.ai
- Portkey budget policiesportkey.ai
- Portkey hybrid deploymentportkey.ai
- Portkey gateway on GitHubgithub.com