Portkey is a full enterprise LLM ops platform — governance, guardrails, semantic cache, fallbacks across 200+ models. aiusage is lean, BYOK, Claude-first, built to shrink one bill. Same pattern (proxy), different customer.
semantic cache, 200+ provider routing, SOC 2, enterprise SSO, cost analytics.
Drop-in proxy for Claude (and GPT, Grok). One env var, cache + route + 60-90% cheaper. Your keys stay yours. Built-in features (Flywheel, Test Links, QA on Server, Agent) all bill from one runs balance.
Portkey strength: semantic cache, 200+ provider routing, SOC 2, enterprise SSO, cost analytics.
Portkey weakness (for our use case): heavyweight setup, enterprise-priced, your cheap-Claude win is one feature of twenty.
aiusage strength: material bill-cutting, instant setup, per-run pricing.
aiusage weakness: we do not try to be an LLM ops platform — if you need the full Portkey feature set, we will never compete on that.
| Tool | Price | What you actually pay |
|---|---|---|
| Portkey | $99/mo minimum + enterprise quotes | Portkey tier + your full Anthropic bill on top |
| aiusage | pay-per-run from a single balance, no seat fees | One runs balance. No seat fees. No subscription. |
you're a 100-dev org with a procurement team and compliance needs.
you're a solo dev or small team just trying to pay Anthropic less.
Yes. Point Portkey at aiusage base URL instead of api.anthropic.com. You get Portkey observability/ops layer AND aiusage caching + cost optimization. Takes one env var change.
ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://aiusage.ai ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=<your existing key>