CapRover vs Portkey (2026): Pricing, Features & Verdict
Portkey is our pick, scoring 7.6/10 against 5.7/10 for CapRover on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria. Its biggest advantage: higher Analytics score (9/10 vs 4/10). For 10 users, CapRover and Portkey are both free; both CapRover and Portkey have a free plan.
Last updated: November 2026
CapRover
5.7/10
CapRover is a free, open-source, self-hosted platform-as-a-service. Developers use it to deploy Docker apps and databases on their own servers through a web dashboard and CLI.
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 | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 5.7/10 | 7.6/10 |
| Integration | 5/10 | 9/10 |
| Support | 3/10 | 6/10 |
| Cost | 10/10 | 7/10 |
| Customization | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Security | 5/10 | 8/10 |
| Reliability | 5/10 | 8/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Analytics | 4/10 | 9/10 |
| Scalability | 5/10 | 8/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | Contact for pricing | $49/mo Production |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Free Open Source (self-hosted) | Free Developer |
| Features | ||
| Uptime SLA | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Automatic Backups | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| Free SSL Certificates | Not listed | |
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
CapRover vs Portkey cost by team size
CapRover and Portkey cost the same at every team size we checked.
| Team size | CapRover | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeOpen Source (self-hosted) | FreeDeveloper |
| 5 users | FreeOpen Source (self-hosted) | FreeDeveloper |
| 10 users | FreeOpen Source (self-hosted) | FreeDeveloper |
| 25 users | FreeOpen Source (self-hosted) | FreeDeveloper |
| 50 users | FreeOpen Source (self-hosted) | FreeDeveloper |
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 CapRover and Portkey suit
Portkey fits enterprise better than CapRover.
| Audience | CapRover | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | 3/10It has no SLA, no vendor support contract and only limited access control or observability. | 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. |
| Developers | 9/10It is built as a do-it-yourself Heroku for developers who are comfortable with Docker and Linux servers. | 9/10Setup takes a few lines of code with OpenAI-compatible SDKs, and there is a free tier and an open-source gateway. |
| Startups | 7/10It avoids per-app PaaS fees early on, but the team must handle operations and backups itself. | 7/10A free tier and a $49 Production plan keep the entry cost low. |
| Agencies | 6/10It works for hosting many small client sites, but reviewers note it has no user management beyond the admin account. | Not rated |
| Freelancers | 8/10A single cheap VPS can host many client apps with no licence cost. | Not rated |
| SaaS Companies | Not rated | 8/10Built for teams running production GenAI features across multiple LLM providers. |
Which One Should You Choose?
Why choose CapRover
- Higher Cost score (10/10 vs 7/10)
- Higher Customization score (8/10 vs 7/10)
Why choose Portkey
- Higher Analytics score (9/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Integration score (9/10 vs 5/10)
- Better fit for enterprise (8/10 vs 3/10)
- Includes Uptime SLA, which CapRover lacks
Pros & Cons
CapRover
Pros
- Free under Apache 2.0 with no paid feature gating, so the only recurring cost is the server, which reviewers put at about 5 USD per month for small deployments.
- It offers several deploy paths from one tool: caprover deploy from a Git branch, tarball upload, Docker image, or Git webhooks.
- Let's Encrypt certificates are issued and renewed automatically, with one-click HTTP to HTTPS redirects.
- Docker Swarm lets you add nodes for multi-server clustering without learning Kubernetes.
- Per-app nginx templates and Docker service overrides give advanced users fine control.
- It is actively maintained in 2026, with v1.16.0 released in November 2026 adding a redesigned dashboard, app health and disk monitoring.
Cons
- The built-in backup covers only CapRover's configuration. App volumes and databases must be backed up separately, and scheduling needs your own script.
- You must manage OS updates, Docker upgrades and security patches yourself. A Docker v29 change required a hotfix in late 2025.
- Reviewers and forum users report that many community one-click templates are outdated or break on newer package versions.
- Docker Compose support is partial because CapRover is built on Docker Swarm.
- There is no user management beyond the admin account, and no commercial support SLA. Help comes through GitHub Discussions and Slack.
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 Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.6/10 against 5.7/10 for CapRover. The largest gap is in Analytics: 4/10 for CapRover and 9/10 for Portkey.
Both are free for 10 users.
Yes, both CapRover and Portkey have a free plan.
Portkey is the better fit for enterprise: we rate it 8/10 for them, against 3/10 for CapRover.
Portkey has Uptime SLA, which CapRover lacks.
