Leanroute vs Portkey

APAC-first vs US-first hosted gateway.

Portkey is the closest functional peer to us in this space: hosted gateway, routing + cache + observability, BYOK, guardrails, enterprise polish. They're US-incorporated, US-hosted, with SOC 2 Type II in place. Our differentiation is APAC + India provider depth, Singapore residency, and a flat $15/$25 BYOK subscription with zero per-request drag — we're built for a different geography and a more cost-sensitive buyer. Where they win: guardrails are first-class for them and out-of-scope for us, and the SOC 2 gap matters if you're selling into procurement-heavy enterprise today.

Snapshot date: June 2026. Cross-checked against portkey.ai/docs.

TL;DR

Pick Leanroute if you're building for APAC + India, want Singapore data residency, prefer a flat $15/$25 BYOK subscription (or 5% top-up-fee credits) over tiered plans with per-request fees, and don't need built-in guardrails (or you'll add them via middleware). Pick Portkey if you need SOC 2 Type II at signup, you want guardrails as a first-class gateway feature, or your buyers are US enterprises with procurement requirements that favor US-incorporated vendors.

Where we differ

Dimension	Leanroute	Portkey
Deployment model	Managed (Singapore)	Managed (US) + self-host enterprise
Cost model	$15/$25 BYOK subscription or 5% top-up-fee credits	Free tier + tiered paid plans ($49+/mo + per-request)
Minimum monthly cost	$0 (prepaid balance)	Free under volume; team/enterprise tiers above
APAC providers (Qwen/GLM/Doubao/Kimi)	First-class with vision	Partial via OpenAI-compatible routing
India providers (Sarvam/Krutrim)	Yes, both	Sarvam via compatible adapter; Krutrim limited
Data residency	Singapore (primary)	US primary; EU on enterprise
Guardrails (block / redact / moderation)	Minimal layer (block + redact + OpenAI moderation pre-check); Presidio/Lakera/Rebuff documented for the heavier needs	First-class library, broader scope
Prompt management + versioning	Out of scope	Yes
Multi-account failover	Yes (5xx → same-tier, #23)	Yes (fallback chains)
Streaming + tool calls everywhere	Yes (#25)	Yes
BYOK encryption at rest	AES-256-GCM under master key	Yes (similar)
Per-org cache scoping	Yes, namespaced	Yes (workspace-scoped)
Spend caps + rate limits	Hard 402/429 at edge, org + per-key	Yes, similar
SOC 2	Type II planned Q1 2027	Type II in place
Best for	APAC + India developer, cost-conscious	US enterprise wanting guardrails + SOC 2 today

Pricing model

Portkey's pricing is tier-based (free → production → enterprise), with feature gates and seat counts that scale alongside. We split it two ways: a flat BYOK subscription ($15 Starter for 1M requests / mo, $25 Pro for 5M) with zero per-request fee, or pay-as-you-go credits with a one-time 5% fee at top-up and zero markup on inference. Either way, $0 on cache hits, no seat cost.

Upstream / mo	Leanroute (best pick)	Portkey Production	You save
$100	$105 (credits)	$149+	$44+ / mo
$1,000	$1,015 (BYOK Starter)	$1,049+	$34+ / mo
$10,000	$10,025 (BYOK Pro)	$10,049+	$24+ / mo

Portkey's Production tier is ~$49/mo flat + per-request fees on top; numbers above use Portkey's published pricing as of 2026-06. Their Team tier (~$199/mo) adds seat-based fees that scale with headcount, regardless of LLM volume.

The free tier comparison is sharper. Portkey free is generous — if you fit inside the free tier's request quota and feature set, it's genuinely $0 vs our 5% top-up fee (or a $15 Starter subscription). For hobby-scale traffic that's the right answer; we're honest about that. Where we win: any volume that pushes you onto Portkey's paid tiers, APAC + India provider breadth, Singapore data residency, cache-hit billing at $0, and the fact that our flat BYOK subscription runs $24/mo cheaper than Portkey Production before their per-request fees are even added.

Run the numbers yourself at /calculator.

The geographic angle

Portkey's primary hosting is US-based with EU available on enterprise. We're Singapore-incorporated with primary hosting in Singapore. For a Bangalore, Jakarta, or Shanghai developer, that's the difference between 150-250ms gateway round-trip and 5-20ms. The latency delta only matters in absolute terms when added to upstream call time (usually 500-3000ms for a non-streaming chat completion), but for streaming first-byte and multi-step agentic flows it adds up.

The other angle is compliance posture. PDPA, PIPL, APPI, DPDP are the regimes Asia-Pacific buyers care about; SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA tend to be what US buyers care about. Portkey leads on the US-focused side; we lead on the APAC side. Full posture at /compliance.

Where Portkey still wins

Guardrails library breadth. Portkey ships a richer catalogue out of the box (PII redactor, moderation, regex filters, profanity, hate detection). We ship the minimum useful layer (block + redact patterns + OpenAI moderation pre-check) and document Presidio / Lakera / Rebuff for the deeper needs we explicitly don't compete on. Both positions are defensible; if you want everything in one product, theirs wins.
SOC 2 Type II today. In place. Ours is Q1 2027. If your buyer is procurement-led and won't move without an attestation, that's a hard delta.
Prompt management. Store, version, deploy prompts as separate artifacts. Out of scope for us.
US enterprise sales motion. SOC 2 + US incorporation + tiered plans is the contract shape US enterprise procurement expects. We're a different shape and that's a feature for some buyers, a bug for others.