Amazon EC2 vs Portkey (2026): Pricing, Features & Verdict
Amazon EC2 and Portkey both score 7.6/10 on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria. For 10 users, Amazon EC2 and Portkey are both free; both Amazon EC2 and Portkey have a free plan.
Last updated: November 2026
A
Amazon EC2
7.6/10
Amazon EC2 is AWS's on-demand virtual server service, offering resizable compute instances billed per second for businesses of any size.
Portkey
7.6/10
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 | A Amazon EC2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.6/10 | 7.6/10 |
| Integration | 10/10 | 9/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Cost | 4/10 | 7/10 |
| Customization | 10/10 | 7/10 |
| Security | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Reliability | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Ease of Use | 4/10 | 8/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 9/10 |
| Scalability | 10/10 | 8/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | Contact for pricing | $49/mo Production |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Free Free Tier | Free Open Source |
| Features | ||
| Dedicated Servers | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Uptime SLA | ||
| Cloud Compute | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | ||
| Multiple Regions | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | ||
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
Amazon EC2 vs Portkey cost by team size
Amazon EC2 and Portkey cost the same at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Amazon EC2 | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeFree Tier | FreeOpen Source |
| 5 users | FreeFree Tier | FreeOpen Source |
| 10 users | FreeFree Tier | FreeOpen Source |
| 25 users | FreeFree Tier | FreeOpen Source |
| 50 users | FreeFree Tier | 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 Amazon EC2 and Portkey suit
| Audience | Amazon EC2 | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | 9/10Provides a 99.99% region-level SLA, Dedicated Hosts for software licensing, and commitment discounts suited to large estates. | 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 | 9/10Auto Scaling and multi-AZ deployment support production SaaS workloads. | 8/10Built for teams running production GenAI features across multiple LLM providers. |
| Developers | 9/10Offers full root control, API, CLI, and SDK access, and a wide range of instance types for building and testing. | 9/10Setup takes a few lines of code with OpenAI-compatible SDKs, and there is a free tier and an open-source gateway. |
| Startups | 7/10Free Tier credits and per-second billing help early teams, but cost management takes expertise. | 7/10A free tier and a $49 Production plan keep the entry cost low. |
| IT Teams | 8/10Broad infrastructure control and monitoring through CloudWatch. | Not rated |
| Small Business | 4/10The complexity and unpredictable bills make simpler VPS hosts a better fit for many small firms. | Not rated |
Which One Should You Choose?
AWhy choose Amazon EC2
- Higher Customization score (10/10 vs 7/10)
- Higher Scalability score (10/10 vs 8/10)
- Includes Dedicated Servers, which Portkey lacks
Why choose Portkey
- Higher Ease of Use score (8/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Cost score (7/10 vs 4/10)
Pros & Cons
AAmazon EC2
Pros
- Billing is per second with a 60-second minimum, so short-lived workloads cost less than under hourly billing.
- Spot capacity at up to 90% off and Savings Plans at up to 72% off give large discounts to teams that plan for them.
- The region-level SLA of 99.99% for multi-AZ deployments includes credits of up to 100%.
- A very wide choice of instance families covers GPU, ARM, memory-heavy, and bare-metal workloads, as well as macOS.
- Native integration with S3, EBS, load balancers, Auto Scaling, and container services is a strength reviewers often mention.
Cons
- Reviewers cite cost as the most common drawback, especially EBS storage and charges that keep running on stopped instances with attached storage.
- Bills are hard to predict because no flat-rate plans are published.
- The learning curve is steep, and some users find the number of options overwhelming.
- Some reviewers find configuration such as AMI upgrades and load balancing complicated.
- The single-instance SLA is only 99.5%, so high availability requires a multi-AZ design.
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
Amazon EC2 and Portkey both score 7.6/10 on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria. The largest gap is in Ease of Use: 4/10 for Amazon EC2 and 8/10 for Portkey.
Both are free for 10 users.
Yes, both Amazon EC2 and Portkey have a free plan.
Amazon EC2 has Dedicated Servers, which Portkey lacks.
