LLM API Gateway Comparison 2026: Portkey vs LiteLLM vs Correctover

If you're building with LLM APIs, you need reliability. Multiple providers, failover, cost tracking — but which tool is right for your use case? Here's an honest comparison.

Feature Comparison

When to Use Each

Portkey

Best for teams that want a managed cloud gateway with built-in observability. All requests route through Portkey's infrastructure. Good for quick setup if you're okay with a proxy layer and don't need response-level contract validation.

LiteLLM

Best for teams that want an open-source unified API layer across providers. Self-hosted option available. Handles routing and basic retries, but doesn't validate response content — it trusts whatever the provider returns.

Helicone

Best for observability and logging. Not a gateway or reliability tool — it monitors and analyzes your LLM traffic but doesn't route, failover, or validate responses.

Correctover

Best for teams that need verified reliability — where failover isn't enough and you need to validate that every response meets your contract before your application sees it. BYOK direct connect means your API keys and requests never pass through a proxy. The local runtime adds 22µs P50 overhead while catching silent failures that standard failover misses.

Can They Work Together?

Yes. Correctover is a local runtime, not a proxy. It sits in your application layer, not between you and the provider. You can use Correctover for contract validation and self-healing alongside Portkey for observability or LiteLLM for unified API formatting.

Getting Started

pip install correctover==1.1.0

from correctover import CorrectoverEngine

engine = CorrectoverEngine(
    providers=["openai", "anthropic", "deepseek"],
    failover_level="L3",
    contract_validation=True
)

result = engine.run("Your prompt here")
# ✓ Provider responded  ✓ Contract validated  ✓ Correctover verified

Comparison based on publicly available information as of June 2026. Features may have changed. Contact each vendor for the most current information.