Portkey
Portkey positions itself as an AI gateway and control plane for LLM applications, focused on routing, observability, prompt management and guardrails across many providers. See portkey.ai for the canonical description.
Comparison
Privian vs Portkey
How Privian compares to Portkey for privacy-first LLM routing, prompt-level data protection and sensitive-data masking.
Quick summary
At a glance
Portkey
Choose Portkey if you primarily need broad LLM routing, orchestration and observability across many providers, with mature gateway features.
Privian
Choose Privian if you want a privacy-first LLM gateway that masks supported personal and sensitive data before prompts reach GPT, Claude and other models.
Definitions
What each product is
Privian
Privian is a privacy-first LLM gateway. One endpoint sits in front of providers like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, and supported personal or sensitive entities are masked with deterministic placeholders before any provider call, then restored in the response. Raw prompts and responses are not persisted; provider credentials are stored BYOK and decrypted only in-process at request time.
Comparison
Side-by-side comparison
Grounded in publicly available product positioning. Where we are not confident, we say so.
| Capability | Portkey | Privian |
|---|---|---|
| Primary positioning | AI gateway with routing, observability and prompt management | Privacy-first LLM gateway with prompt-level data protection |
| Privacy-first routing | Not a stated focus | Yes, core design goal |
| PII masking | Not a stated focus | Yes — supported personal/secret entities masked before provider call |
| Prompt-level data protection | Not a stated focus | Yes — deterministic placeholders, rehydrated in the response |
| BYOK | See vendor docs | Yes — provider keys stored AES-GCM, decrypted in-process |
| Gateway model | Hosted AI gateway with control plane | Hosted gateway with a small JSON contract |
| Prompt injection protection | Not a stated focus | No claim |
| Tool / function calling | See vendor docs | Not currently supported |
| Native streaming | See vendor docs | Not currently supported (artificial chunking only) |
| Open source | See vendor docs | Closed source (beta) |
| Observability | First-class dashboards and analytics | Structural counters only; raw prompts never persisted |
| Pricing model | See vendor pricing | Usage-based plans, see /pricing |
| Enterprise orientation | See vendor docs | Designed for privacy-sensitive teams; HIPAA/SOC 2/PCI not claimed |
| Best fit | Teams that need broad orchestration across many providers | Teams that need supported PII masking and provider-agnostic BYOK routing |
Architecture
Architecture differences
Portkey
Portkey's architecture centres on a hosted gateway plus a control plane for routing rules, fallbacks, caching and observability dashboards across providers.
Privian
Privian sits between your application and the model provider. Each request runs through detection → masking → BYOK provider call → rehydration in a single in-memory pass. The data plane is designed around minimising what reaches the provider rather than around routing breadth or orchestration.
Privacy & security
Privacy and security positioning
What Privian optimises for
- Prompt-level data protection
- Supported PII and sensitive-value masking
- Privacy-first routing with BYOK
- No raw-prompt persistence; structural observability only
What Privian does NOT claim
- Prompt injection or jailbreak defence
- HIPAA / SOC 2 / PCI certification
- Tool / function calling security guarantees
- Downstream model behaviour guarantees
When to choose
When to choose Portkey
- You need orchestration, fallbacks and observability across many LLM providers
- Prompt management and a control plane for prompt versions matter
- Privacy at the prompt content level is not your primary requirement
When to choose
When to choose Privian
- You need supported PII / sensitive-data masking before the provider call
- You want prompt-level data protection by default, not as a separate add-on
- You want provider-agnostic routing with BYOK and no prompt persistence
Transparency
Honest limitations
Privian is in active development. Listing what it does not do today is part of how we earn trust — expect this list to shrink over time.
- No tool / function calling in the current beta
- No native provider token streaming yet (stream: true is artificially chunked)
- No OpenAI SDK drop-in compatibility
- No claim to detect or block prompt injection or jailbreaks
- No Norwegian fødselsnummer masking yet
- No custom user-defined entity types yet
- No HIPAA / SOC 2 / PCI certifications at this time
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- Is Privian a replacement for Portkey?
- Not in general. Portkey covers a broader orchestration and observability surface. Privian focuses specifically on privacy-first routing and supported PII masking — the two products optimise for different problems.
- Can Privian work alongside Portkey?
- In principle yes — Privian is a hosted gateway with a small JSON contract, so it can sit on either side of another routing layer. Most teams pick one as the primary entry point in front of providers.
- Why would I choose a privacy-first LLM gateway?
- If your application prompts contain personal data, support content or internal information, a routing-only gateway forwards all of it to the model verbatim. A privacy-first gateway shrinks that exposure surface at the edge.
- Who should use Privian?
- Teams shipping AI features over privacy-sensitive prompts — customer support AI, internal copilots, SaaS AI features — where supported entities should not reach the model in clear text.
- Does Privian block prompt injection?
- No. Privian focuses on prompt-level data protection — masking supported personal and sensitive values before they reach the model. It does not claim to detect or block prompt injection or jailbreaks. If injection defence is your primary requirement, a dedicated LLM firewall is a better fit.
- Does Privian support native streaming?
- Not in the current beta. The gateway accepts stream: true and returns artificially chunked text, but it does not pass through native provider token streams yet.
Plans & pricing
See pricing for Privian — a privacy-first alternative to Portkey
BYOK, zero retention, prompt-level masking. Pricing is published transparently; Privian is in beta and limits may change.