--- title: "Portkey Alternative — Zuplo" description: "Portkey alternative: an independent, developer-first MCP gateway with a built-in OAuth 2.0 server, per-tool curation, and TypeScript-programmable policies." canonicalUrl: "https://zuplo.com/api-gateways/portkey-alternative-zuplo" pageType: "comparison" competitor: "Portkey" subtitle: "The Independent MCP Gateway for Teams Re-Evaluating After the Palo Alto Networks Acquisition" --- # Zuplo vs Portkey _The Independent MCP Gateway for Teams Re-Evaluating After the Palo Alto Networks Acquisition_ > Portkey alternative: an independent, developer-first MCP gateway with a built-in OAuth 2.0 server, per-tool curation, and TypeScript-programmable policies. ## Why Teams Move Away from Portkey ### Independence and Roadmap Sovereignty Portkey is now a feature inside Prisma AIRS, Palo Alto Networks' AI security platform. The product roadmap belongs to PANW. Cross-vendor neutrality, developer-first DX, and self-serve pricing are all subject to the integration plan. There is a real 12–18 month window where the value drift between independent Portkey and integrated-PANW Portkey becomes visible. ### Log-Cap Observability Blind Spots Portkey's pricing meters recorded logs. On the free tier, once you exceed the log cap the gateway keeps routing requests to LLMs and MCP servers but new logs are no longer recorded in the observability dashboard; the paid Production tier bills overages instead, up to a hard request ceiling. For a governance product, silently losing visibility under load is the wrong failure mode. ### Short Audit Retention on Pro Portkey's Production tier retains 30 days of logs. Regulated workloads (HIPAA, SOX, FedRAMP) generally require multi-year retention. Long-term audit retention sits behind Enterprise sales — now a Palo Alto Networks enterprise sale. ### Governance Behind an Enterprise Call SSO, advanced RBAC, VPC deployment, and EU data residency are Enterprise-tier features at Portkey. Mid-market teams that need real governance for MCP traffic — without a six-figure ELA — are increasingly pushed up-market. ## About Portkey Portkey is an AI gateway and MCP gateway headquartered in San Francisco, founded by Rohit Agarwal and Ayush Garg. The product proxies LLM traffic across 1,600+ models via an OpenAI-compatible Universal API, plus an MCP Gateway (launched January 21, 2026) that fronts third-party and internal MCP servers with OAuth, RBAC, and an MCP Registry. Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) announced an agreement to acquire Portkey on April 30, 2026, and completed the acquisition on May 29, 2026. Portkey becomes the AI Gateway component of Prisma AIRS — PANW's AI security platform — serving as the central enforcement point for capabilities including Agent Artifact Scanning, Automated Red Teaming, and Agent Runtime Security. ## Why Choose Zuplo Zuplo is the independent MCP gateway built on the same programmable, code- first runtime that already runs your APIs. Every MCP request passes through policies you write in TypeScript — prompt-injection detection, payload redaction in logs, per-user OAuth brokering to upstream MCP servers, per- tool curation, RFC 8707 token scoping, audit logs. No SDK to embed, no vendor lock to a security suite, no log-cap silently dropping your visibility. Bring your own IDP. Deploy via GitOps. Same model as our API gateway, extended to the agent era. ## Feature Comparison ### Independence and Roadmap Sovereignty _Independent product roadmap vs. Palo Alto Networks security-suite consolidation._ - **Zuplo** — Independent, venture-backed company focused on the developer-first API and MCP gateway category. Roadmap driven by customers, not by an acquirer's enterprise security suite integration plan. - **Portkey** — Acquired by Palo Alto Networks in May 2026. Future MCP Gateway capability lands inside Prisma AIRS. Roadmap and pricing are subject to the integration with PANW's broader security platform. ### MCP Gateway Maturity _Multiple years of MCP product investment vs. a January 2026 launch acquired by Palo Alto Networks in May 2026._ - **Zuplo** — Shipping the MCP gateway category through 2025 and 2026 — open-source @zuplo/mcp primitives, OpenAPI-to-MCP, virtual MCP server composition, and a full OAuth 2.0 authorization server implementing the 2025-06-18 MCP spec over streamable HTTP. - **Portkey** — MCP Gateway shipped on January 21, 2026 — roughly three months of independent product life before the Palo Alto Networks acquisition was announced, with the deal closing on May 29, 2026. ### Per-User OAuth Brokering to Upstream MCP Servers _Per-user OAuth brokering across many upstreams vs. per-server credential injection._ - **Zuplo** — Each end-user completes the upstream's OAuth flow themselves; the Gateway brokers and refreshes their tokens per session with per-user revocation. Works with Linear, GitHub, Stripe, Atlassian, Slack, and any OAuth-compliant MCP server. Refresh tokens sealed in the gateway vault with AES-GCM, never returned to the MCP client. - **Portkey** — Configures OAuth 2.1, API keys, or custom headers per server, with credential injection and identity forwarding handled by the gateway. Centralized credential management works well per upstream; per-user OAuth brokering across many dynamically composed upstreams is not its primary design point. ### Virtual MCP Servers (Multi-Upstream Composition) _First-class virtual MCP servers vs. registry-style cataloging of individual upstreams._ - **Zuplo** — Compose multiple upstream MCP servers behind a single virtual MCP URL with a curated tool list. Finance gets a read-only view of Stripe and QuickBooks. Engineering gets GitHub and deployment tools. Same governance, different exposure. - **Portkey** — MCP Registry catalogs servers. RBAC available at server, workspace, team, and tool level. Composing multiple servers behind one virtual endpoint with curated tool exposure is not a first-class concept. ### Programmable Policies (TypeScript vs Configuration) _TypeScript-programmable policies vs. configuration-driven gateway._ - **Zuplo** — Every policy is TypeScript code. Pre and post-request hooks at every stage of the MCP request lifecycle. Full npm ecosystem, full type safety, real CI tests. Custom auth, custom guardrails, custom routing — not a configuration UI. - **Portkey** — Configuration-driven gateway. Programmable behavior happens via published guardrail vendors and in the prompt-management studio. Custom logic outside the supported policy set requires going outside the platform. ### GitOps and CI/CD _Git-native deployment with PR previews vs. UI-driven configuration._ - **Zuplo** — Git is the source of truth. Every push deploys, every PR gets a live preview environment. Same code-first deployment model as the rest of the Zuplo platform. Branches, environments, and rollbacks for MCP gateway configuration. - **Portkey** — Configuration is managed in the Portkey UI and API. Promotion across environments and version control of governance rules is the customer's responsibility. ### Prompt-Injection and Payload Guardrails _Code-first guardrail composition vs. configuration of supported guardrail vendors._ - **Zuplo** — Prompt-injection detection on every MCP request, inherited from the Zuplo policy stack. Automatic redaction of tokens and customer payloads in logs. Composable with the AI Gateway's guardrail policies — including the Akamai AI Firewall partnership — or your own TypeScript policy. Block, redact, or flag — your choice. - **Portkey** — 60+ guardrails advertised, including prompt injection, PII, content classification, and a Palo Alto Networks AIRS plugin. Action types include deny, route, retry, and switch model. Vendor selection is configured in the Portkey console. ### Observability and Audit Retention _Typed events + 90-day audit retention with SIEM export vs. 30-day Pro log retention with metered log caps._ - **Zuplo** — Typed analytics events fire across the MCP request lifecycle, capability invocations, and upstream OAuth flow. Trace-ready structured logs (tenant, session, capability, latency, failure origin) pipe straight into Datadog, Honeycomb, or BigQuery. 90-day default account- level audit-log retention, exportable to your SIEM. No log caps that silently drop observability under load. - **Portkey** — Production tier retains 30 days of logs (3 days on the free tier). Long-term retention is an Enterprise add-on. On the free tier, exceeding the log allotment causes new logs to silently stop being recorded — gateway routing continues, but observability does not; the Production tier bills metered overages beyond its request allotment. ### Identity Provider Integration _Auth0 + OIDC presets on all paid tiers vs. SSO behind Enterprise sales._ - **Zuplo** — First-class presets for Auth0 and any OIDC provider — drop in your issuer URL and your customers click Connect. Per-user JWT claims drive per-team and per-tenant authorization at the gateway edge. SAML SSO is also available across the broader Zuplo platform. - **Portkey** — SSO with Okta and Microsoft Entra ID supported. SSO availability and advanced RBAC live on the Enterprise tier. ### Deployment Model _Managed, dedicated, and self-hosted across all paid tiers vs. private deployment behind Enterprise._ - **Zuplo** — Managed multi-tenant on 300+ edge POPs by default, managed dedicated single-tenant on AWS, Azure, GCP, or Akamai, and self-hosted Kubernetes. Data residency via region pinning on dedicated deployments. - **Portkey** — SaaS, Private Cloud, VPC, and self-hosted options. Open-source gateway runs on Node.js, Docker/Docker Compose, or Cloudflare Workers. VPC and on-prem deployment are Enterprise-tier. ### Compliance Posture _Compliance baseline included on Enterprise vs. compliance-by-tier structure._ - **Zuplo** — SOC 2 Type II audited annually, GDPR-aligned data processing, annual third-party penetration tests under NDA, audit logs across the control plane. - **Portkey** — Enterprise tier holds SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR. Production and Developer tiers do not include the same compliance posture without upgrading. ### LLM Provider Routing _Code-first routing across the enterprise short list vs. broad multi- provider coverage._ - **Zuplo** — Model routing, retries, fallbacks, and budget controls available as first-class TypeScript policies. Provider coverage focused on the enterprise short list (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI) — depth over breadth. - **Portkey** — Universal API across 1,600+ models spanning text, vision, audio, and image from dozens of providers. Smart routing, load balancing, semantic caching, fallbacks, retries, multimodal, virtual keys with vault-backed rotation. ### Open Source Footprint _Open primitives plus a programmable, source-available runtime vs. a broadly open-source AI gateway._ - **Zuplo** — @zuplo/mcp open-source MCP client and server primitives, MIT licensed. Zuplo runtime and policies are source-available with TypeScript escape hatches. - **Portkey** — Portkey-AI/gateway is MIT-licensed (~12K GitHub stars) and, since the March 24, 2026 unification, open-sources the LLM router, 50+ guardrails, governance, observability, auth, and the MCP Gateway. The hosted control panel and managed platform remain SaaS. Open-source strength is real; Zuplo's wedge is a TypeScript-programmable runtime, not OSS coverage. ## FAQ **What changed for Portkey customers when Palo Alto Networks announced the acquisition?** Palo Alto Networks announced an agreement to acquire Portkey on April 30, 2026, and completed the acquisition on May 29, 2026. Portkey becomes the AI Gateway for Prisma AIRS, PANW's AI security platform. PANW has stated it will continue to support existing Portkey customers, but the long-term GTM motion will shift toward enterprise suite procurement and tighter integration with the broader Prisma portfolio. Customers should expect product velocity on independent DX to slow, and pricing to consolidate behind multi-year enterprise agreements over the next 12–18 months. **How is Zuplo's MCP Gateway different from Portkey's?** Zuplo's MCP Gateway is built on the same TypeScript-programmable runtime as the rest of the Zuplo platform. Every MCP request passes through policies you write as code — prompt-injection detection, payload redaction in logs, per-user OAuth brokering to upstream MCP servers, per-tool curation. Virtual MCP servers compose multiple upstreams (Linear, GitHub, Stripe, Atlassian, Slack) behind a single URL with a curated tool list per team. RFC 8707 resource indicators bind every token to its virtual server. Configuration lives in your Git repository with PR preview environments. Portkey's MCP Gateway is a configuration-driven product with an MCP Registry and multi-level RBAC; both products solve the same enterprise problem, but Zuplo's wedge is code-first programmability, multi-upstream virtual servers, and independence from a security-suite integration plan. **Should I migrate off Portkey today?** It depends on what you use Portkey for. If your primary use case is LLM provider routing across 1,600+ models, Portkey continues to ship that product and there is no immediate forcing function. If your use case is MCP governance — proxying employee MCP traffic from Claude, Cursor, and ChatGPT to Linear, GitHub, Stripe, Atlassian, Slack, and internal servers — re-evaluation is worth running now. The MCP Gateway product shipped in January 2026, the roadmap is now part of Prisma AIRS following the May 2026 acquisition, and the cut-over for MCP traffic specifically is low-disruption because MCP clients point at a gateway URL. **How does Zuplo handle per-user OAuth to upstream MCP servers?** Each end-user authenticates to the Zuplo Gateway via your IDP (Auth0 preset or any OIDC provider). Per route, the Gateway then completes the upstream's OAuth flow per session, with per-user revocation. Refresh tokens are sealed in the gateway vault with AES-GCM, keyed to the user's gateway identity, and never returned to the MCP client. PKCE S256 is enforced as the MCP spec requires, and every token carries an RFC 8707 resource indicator bound to its virtual MCP server — so a token minted for one virtual server is rejected at another. **What about LLM provider routing?** Zuplo supports model routing, retries, fallbacks, and budget controls as first-class TypeScript policies across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, AWS Bedrock, and Azure OpenAI. If your primary need is breadth of provider coverage (1,600+ models, exotic open-source providers, semantic LLM caching), Portkey's Universal API is the deeper product. Many customers run Zuplo for governed MCP traffic and Portkey or a different router for LLM routing — until the next renewal cycle consolidates the decision. **How does pricing compare?** Zuplo offers a free tier for development and a predictable Enterprise tier that includes SSO, SCIM, audit log retention, managed dedicated deployment, and the MCP Gateway as a first-class product. Portkey offers a free Developer tier, a $49/mo Production tier metered on logs (with overage billing once you exceed the log cap), and a custom Enterprise tier for SSO, VPC, and advanced RBAC. As the integration with Palo Alto Networks proceeds, expect Portkey pricing to shift toward PANW's enterprise-suite procurement model. **Is the MCP Gateway generally available?** Yes. The MCP Gateway is available today on every Zuplo tier, including the free tier — sign up at portal.zuplo.com/signup and federate your first upstream MCP server. The OAuth 2.0 authorization server, virtual MCP servers, and audit logging are on by default.