Algolia vs Portkey (2026): Pricing, Features & Verdict
Portkey is our pick, scoring 7.8/10 against 7.3/10 for Algolia on our AI Software criteria. Its biggest advantage: higher Analytics score (9/10 vs 7/10). For 10 users, Algolia and Portkey are both free; both Algolia and Portkey have a free plan.
Last updated: November 2026
Algolia
7.3/10
Hosted AI search and discovery platform that lets developers and e-commerce teams add fast keyword, semantic, and agentic search, recommendations, and personalization to sites and apps.
Portkey
7.8/10
Portkey is an AI gateway and LLMOps control plane that routes, monitors, and governs requests to 1,600+ LLMs for engineering teams and enterprises.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.3/10 | 7.8/10 |
| Integration | 8/10 | 9/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 9/10 |
| Customization | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Cost | 5/10 | 7/10 |
| Scalability | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Security | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Output Quality | 8/10 | Not listed |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | Contact for pricing | $49/mo Production |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Free Grow | Free Open Source |
| Features | ||
| AI Agents | Not listed | |
| API Access | Not listed | |
| Chatbots | Not listed | |
| Enterprise Controls | Not listed | |
| Knowledge Base Search | Not listed | |
| Private Deployment | Not listed | |
| More features | ||
| API and CLI | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | Not listed | |
Algolia vs Portkey cost by team size
Algolia and Portkey cost the same at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Algolia | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeGrow | FreeOpen Source |
| 5 users | FreeGrow | FreeOpen Source |
| 10 users | FreeGrow | FreeOpen Source |
| 25 users | FreeGrow | FreeOpen Source |
| 50 users | FreeGrow | FreeOpen Source |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Who Algolia and Portkey suit
| Audience | Algolia | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| Developers | 9/10Algolia is API-first, with SDKs, UI libraries, and a free tier aimed at developers building search into apps. | 9/10Setup takes a few lines of code with OpenAI-compatible SDKs, and there is a free tier and an open-source gateway. |
| Enterprise | 8/10The Elevate tier adds NeuralSearch, SSO, a 99.99% SLA, global hosting, and enterprise support under annual contracts. | 8/10The Enterprise plan adds SSO, RBAC, VPC deployment, and HIPAA/SOC 2 support, and the product is now part of Palo Alto Networks' Prisma AIRS. |
| SaaS Companies | 8/10Hosted, low-latency search with per-request billing fits in-app and documentation search for SaaS products. | 8/10Built for teams running production GenAI features across multiple LLM providers. |
| Startups | 7/10The free tier and a startup program lower entry costs, though usage pricing can grow quickly as traffic grows. | 7/10A free tier and a $49 Production plan keep the entry cost low. |
| E-commerce | 9/10Connectors for major commerce platforms, merchandising, recommendations, and the agentic commerce MCP server target online retailers directly. | Not rated |
| Small Business | 5/10Non-technical small teams may find configuration demanding, and reviewers flag the cost as requirements grow. | Not rated |
Which One Should You Choose?
Why choose Algolia
- Higher Customization score (8/10 vs 7/10)
- Higher Scalability score (9/10 vs 8/10)
Why choose Portkey
- Higher Analytics score (9/10 vs 7/10)
- Higher Cost score (7/10 vs 5/10)
Pros & Cons
Algolia
Pros
- Reviewers often praise its search speed and quick setup. On G2, ease of use is the most-cited positive, with about 74 mentions, across roughly 450 reviews averaging 4.5 out of 5.
- The free tier and no-contract Grow plans let developers launch production search without a sales conversation.
- Official connectors exist for Shopify, Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce, commercetools, and Salesforce B2C Commerce.
- Agent Studio and the MCP server let teams ground LLM agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or Azure in their live search index, with guardrails, rate limits, and token budgets.
- Algolia publishes compliance documentation covering SOC 2 and ISO 27001/27017 certification.
Cons
- Cost is the top complaint on G2, where 'Expensive' is mentioned about 36 times. Competitor analyses describe the bills as hard to forecast.
- AI features push the search rate from $0.50 to $1.75 per 1,000 requests on Grow Plus.
- NeuralSearch semantic search, SSO, and the 99.99% SLA are reserved for the custom-priced Elevate contract.
- Algolia is cloud-only, with no self-hosted option, which raises data sovereignty and lock-in concerns.
- Advanced relevance and filtering setup has a learning curve for teams without search engineers, and free users get only community support.
Portkey
Pros
- Unified API covering more than 1,600 models, with automatic fallbacks, retries, and load balancing.
- Detailed logs and traces show the latency, cost, and retry path of each request.
- An open-source core and a free tier let developers try it before paying.
- Enterprise governance features include budgets, rate limits, RBAC, SSO, and audit logs, with VPC deployment available.
Cons
- Since the 2026 acquisition, paid plans route through Palo Alto Networks' Prisma AIRS, which brings uncertainty about future pricing and roadmap.
- You pay for the gateway on top of LLM provider costs, and provider billing stays separate.
- Below Enterprise, support is community-only, and the free plan keeps logs for just 3 days.
- It may be more platform than needed for small prototypes that want only a simple proxy.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Portkey scores higher on our AI Software criteria: 7.8/10 against 7.3/10 for Algolia. The largest gap is in Analytics: 7/10 for Algolia and 9/10 for Portkey.
Both are free for 10 users.
Yes, both Algolia and Portkey have a free plan.
