Portkey enhances any OpenAI API compliant project by adding enterprise-grade features like observability, reliability, rate limiting, access control, and budget management—all without requiring code changes.

It is a drop-in replacement for your existing OpenAI-compatible applications. This guide explains how to integrate Portkey with minimal changes to your project settings.

While OpenAI (or any other provider) provides an API for AI model access. Commercial usage often require additional features like:

Advanced Observability: Real-time usage tracking for 40+ key metrics and logs for every request
Unified AI Gateway - Single interface for 250+ LLMs with API key management
Governance - Real-time spend tracking, set budget limits and RBAC in your AI systems
Security Guardrails - PII detection, content filtering, and compliance controls

1. Getting Started with Portkey

Portkey allows you to use 1600+ LLMs with your n8n setup, with minimal configuration required. Let’s set up the core components in Portkey that you’ll need for integration.

Create an Integration

Navigate to the Integrations section on Portkey’s Sidebar. This is where you’ll connect your LLM providers.

Find your preferred provider (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)
Click Connect on the provider card
In the “Create New Integration” window:
- Enter a Name for reference
- Enter a Slug for the integration
- Enter your API Key and other provider specific details for the provider
Click Next Step

In your next step you’ll see workspace provisioning options. You can select the default “Shared Team Workspace” if this is your first time OR chose your current one.

Configure Models

On the model provisioning page:

Leave all models selected (or customize)
Toggle Automatically enable new models if desired

Click Create Integration to complete the integration

Copy the Provider Slug

Once your Integration is created:

Go to Model Catalog → AI Providers tab
Find your integration
Copy the slug (e.g., openai-dev)

This slug is your provider’s unique identifier - you’ll need it for the next step.

Create Default Config

Portkey’s config is a JSON object used to define routing rules for requests to your gateway. You can create these configs in the Portkey app and reference them in requests via the config ID. For this setup, we’ll create a simple config using your provider (OpenAI) and model (gpt-4o).

Go to Configs in Portkey dashboard

Create new config with:

{
    "virtual_key": "YOUR_PROVIDER_SLUG", //your provider slug from previous step
    "override_params": {
      "model": "gpt-4o" // Your preferred model name exact string
    }
}

Save and note the Config ID & Name for the next step

Configure Portkey API Key

Finally, create a Portkey API key:

Go to API Keys in Portkey
Create new API key
Select the config that you create from previous step
Generate and save your API key

Save your API key securely - you’ll need it for n8n integration.

🎉 Voila, Setup complete! You now have everything needed to integrate Portkey with your application.

2. Integrating Portkey with Your Project

You can integrate Portkey with any OpenAI API-compatible project through a simple configuration change. This integration enables advanced monitoring, security features, and analytics for your LLM applications. Here’s how you do it:

Locate LLM Settings Navigate to your project’s LLM settings page and find the OpenAI configuration section (usually labeled ‘OpenAI-Compatible’ or ‘Generic OpenAI’).”
Configure Base URL Set the base URL to:
```
https://api.portkey.ai/v1
```
Add API Key Enter your Portkey API key in the appropriate field. You can generate this key from your Portkey dashboard under API Keys section.
Configure Model Settings If your integration allows direct model configuration, you can specify it in the LLM settings. Otherwise, create a configuration object:
```
{
  "provider":"@<YOUR_VIRTUAL_API_KEY>",
  "override_params": {
    "model": "gpt-4o" // Specify your desired model
  }
}
```

3. Set Up Enterprise Governance for Your Project

Why Enterprise Governance? If you are using Your Project inside your orgnaization, you need to consider several governance aspects:

Cost Management: Controlling and tracking AI spending across teams
Access Control: Managing team access and workspaces
Usage Analytics: Understanding how AI is being used across the organization
Security & Compliance: Maintaining enterprise security standards
Reliability: Ensuring consistent service across all users
Model Management: Managing what models are being used in your setup

Portkey adds a comprehensive governance layer to address these enterprise

Enterprise Implementation Guide

Step 1: Implement Budget Controls & Rate Limits

Step 2: Define Model Access Rules

Step 4: Set Routing Configuration

Portkey allows you to control your routing logic very simply with it’s Configs feature. Portkey Configs provide this control layer with things like:

Data Protection: Implement guardrails for sensitive code and data
Reliability Controls: Add fallbacks, load-balance, retry and smart conditional routing logic
Caching: Implement Simple and Semantic Caching. and more…

Example Configuration:

Here’s a basic configuration to load-balance requests to OpenAI and Anthropic:

{
	"strategy": {
		"mode": "load-balance"
	},
	"targets": [
		{
			"provider":"@YOUR_OPENAI_PROVIDER",
			"override_params": {
				"model": "gpt-model"
			}
		},
		{
			"provider":"@YOUR_ANTHROPIC_PROVIDER",
			"override_params": {
				"model": "claude-sonnet-model"
			}
		}
	]
}

Create your config on the Configs page in your Portkey dashboard. You’ll need the config ID for connecting to Your Project’s setup.

Configs can be updated anytime to adjust controls without affecting running applications.

Step 4: Implement Access Controls

Step 3: Implement Access Controls

Create User-specific API keys that automatically:

Track usage per developer/team with the help of metadata
Apply appropriate configs to route requests
Collect relevant metadata to filter logs
Enforce access permissions

Create API keys through:

Example using Python SDK:

from portkey_ai import Portkey

portkey = Portkey(api_key="YOUR_ADMIN_API_KEY")

api_key = portkey.api_keys.create(
    name="frontend-engineering",
    type="organisation",
    workspace_id="YOUR_WORKSPACE_ID",
    defaults={
        "config_id": "your-config-id",
        "metadata": {
            "environment": "development",
            "department": "engineering",
            "team": "frontend"
        }
    },
    scopes=["logs.view", "configs.read"]
)

For detailed key management instructions, see our API Keys documentation.

Step 5: Deploy & Monitor

Enterprise Features Now Available

Your Project now has:

Departmental budget controls
Model access governance
Usage tracking & attribution
Security guardrails
Reliability features

Portkey Features

Now that you have set up your enterprise-grade Project environment, let’s explore the comprehensive features Portkey provides to ensure secure, efficient, and cost-effective AI operations.

1. Comprehensive Metrics

Using Portkey you can track 40+ key metrics including cost, token usage, response time, and performance across all your LLM providers in real time. You can also filter these metrics based on custom metadata that you can set in your configs. Learn more about metadata here.

2. Advanced Logs

Portkey’s logging dashboard provides detailed logs for every request made to your LLMs. These logs include:

Complete request and response tracking
Metadata tags for filtering
Cost attribution and much more…

3. Unified Access to 250+ LLMs

You can easily switch between 250+ LLMs. Call various LLMs such as Anthropic, Gemini, Mistral, Azure OpenAI, Google Vertex AI, AWS Bedrock, and many more by simply changing the virtual key in your default config object.

4. Advanced Metadata Tracking

Using Portkey, you can add custom metadata to your LLM requests for detailed tracking and analytics. Use metadata tags to filter logs, track usage, and attribute costs across departments and teams.

Custom Metata

5. Enterprise Access Management

Budget Controls

Set and manage spending limits across teams and departments. Control costs with granular budget limits and usage tracking.

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Enterprise-grade SSO integration with support for SAML 2.0, Okta, Azure AD, and custom providers for secure authentication.

Organization Management

Hierarchical organization structure with workspaces, teams, and role-based access control for enterprise-scale deployments.

Access Rules & Audit Logs

Comprehensive access control rules and detailed audit logging for security compliance and usage tracking.

6. Reliability Features

Fallbacks

Automatically switch to backup targets if the primary target fails.

Conditional Routing

Route requests to different targets based on specified conditions.

Load Balancing

Distribute requests across multiple targets based on defined weights.

Caching

Enable caching of responses to improve performance and reduce costs.

Smart Retries

Automatic retry handling with exponential backoff for failed requests

Budget Limits

Set and manage budget limits across teams and departments. Control costs with granular budget limits and usage tracking.

7. Advanced Guardrails

Protect your Project’s data and enhance reliability with real-time checks on LLM inputs and outputs. Leverage guardrails to:

Prevent sensitive data leaks
Enforce compliance with organizational policies
PII detection and masking
Content filtering
Custom security rules
Data compliance checks

Guardrails

Implement real-time protection for your LLM interactions with automatic detection and filtering of sensitive content, PII, and custom security rules. Enable comprehensive data protection while maintaining compliance with organizational policies.

FAQs

How do I update my Virtual Key limits after creation?

Can I use multiple LLM providers with the same API key?

How do I track costs for different teams?

What happens if a team exceeds their budget limit?

Next Steps

Join our Community

For enterprise support and custom features, contact our enterprise team.

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On this page

1. Getting Started with Portkey
2. Integrating Portkey with Your Project
3. Set Up Enterprise Governance for Your Project
Portkey Features
1. Comprehensive Metrics
2. Advanced Logs
3. Unified Access to 250+ LLMs
4. Advanced Metadata Tracking
5. Enterprise Access Management
6. Reliability Features
7. Advanced Guardrails
FAQs
Next Steps

Ecosystem

LLM Integrations

Cloud Platforms

Guardrails

Plugins

Vector Databases

Agents

AI Apps

Libraries

Tracing Providers

​1. Getting Started with Portkey

​2. Integrating Portkey with Your Project

​3. Set Up Enterprise Governance for Your Project

​Enterprise Features Now Available

​Portkey Features

​1. Comprehensive Metrics

​2. Advanced Logs

​3. Unified Access to 250+ LLMs

​4. Advanced Metadata Tracking

Custom Metata

​5. Enterprise Access Management

Budget Controls

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Organization Management

Access Rules & Audit Logs

​6. Reliability Features

Fallbacks

Conditional Routing

Load Balancing

Caching

Smart Retries

Budget Limits

​7. Advanced Guardrails

Guardrails

​FAQs

​Next Steps

1. Getting Started with Portkey

2. Integrating Portkey with Your Project

3. Set Up Enterprise Governance for Your Project

Enterprise Features Now Available

Portkey Features

1. Comprehensive Metrics

2. Advanced Logs

3. Unified Access to 250+ LLMs

4. Advanced Metadata Tracking

5. Enterprise Access Management

6. Reliability Features

7. Advanced Guardrails

FAQs

Next Steps