Behest vs Portkey
They watch. We operate.
Portkey is an AI gateway — it routes, logs, and observes LLM traffic. Behest is the AI backend — it manages auth, memory, PII, rate limiting, token budgets, and more.
Portkey
Portkey is an AI gateway that sits between your app and LLM providers. It provides routing, fallback, caching, and observability for LLM API calls.
Strong at: Multi-provider routing, observability dashboards, request logging, cost analytics, and fallback/retry logic.
Category: AI Gateway / Observability
Behest
Behest is the AI backend. One API call gives you auth, memory, PII scrubbing, prompt defense, rate limiting, token budgets, kill switches, and observability — self-hosted in your cloud.
Strong at: Complete AI backend with security, multi-tenant isolation, built-in business logic, and usage tier economics.
Category: AI Backend as a Service
The core difference
Portkey observes what flows through the gateway. Behest operates the backend — handling auth, scrubbing PII, blocking prompt injections, enforcing rate limits, managing memory, and tracking token budgets before the LLM ever sees a request.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Behest | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| CORS Handling | ||
| Multi-tenant Auth & Isolation | ||
| Rate Limiting (3-tier) | ||
| PII Scrubbing | ||
| Prompt Injection Defense | ||
| Conversation Memory | ||
| System Prompts | ||
| Token Budgets | ||
| Kill Switches | ||
| Smart LLM Routing | ||
| Observability & Analytics | ||
| Multi-provider Support | ||
| Self-hosted Deployment | ||
| Usage Tiers & Token Economics |
Choose Portkey if you need...
- Deep observability dashboards for LLM traffic
- Multi-provider routing with fallback logic
- A lightweight proxy in front of your existing backend
Choose Behest if you need...
- A complete AI backend with auth, memory, and security
- Multi-tenant isolation and per-tenant usage controls
- Built-in PII scrubbing and prompt injection defense
- Token budgets, usage tiers, and monetization tools
- Self-hosted deployment in your own cloud
Need more than a gateway? Get the whole backend.
Auth, memory, PII scrubbing, prompt defense, rate limiting, token budgets, and observability — one API call.