Is Convoy or Portkey better?

Neither clearly leads. Convoy starts at Free and Portkey at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Convoy or Portkey?

Convoy has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Convoy and On request for Portkey.

Does Convoy or Portkey run on more platforms?

Convoy runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud. Portkey runs on Web.

Can I use Convoy for free?

Yes. Convoy has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Portkey starts at On request.

What is Convoy best used for?

Convoy is most often used for a fintech that cannot route customer webhook traffic through a third-party saas for compliance reasons, a high-volume platform for which per-message webhook pricing costs more than the flat premium licence, a team that also receives webhooks from many providers and wants ingestion, verification and deduplication in the same gateway, an engineering group that wants webhook delivery driven directly from an existing kafka or sqs topic. Of those, a fintech that cannot route customer webhook traffic through a third-party saas for compliance reasons and a high-volume platform for which per-message webhook pricing costs more than the flat premium licence are not what Portkey is typically brought in for.

What can Convoy do that Portkey cannot?

Convoy covers Inbound and outbound, Broker-driven ingestion, Payload transformation, Portal links.

APIs · head to head

Convoy vs Portkey

Convoy

APIs

Open source webhooks gateway you self-host, handling both sending and receiving

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Portkey

APIs

Observe, govern, and secure every AI interaction across your enterprise

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Only Convoy has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
Each has a real cost: Convoy the default deployment is self-hosted, so you operate Convoy plus Postgres and Redis and carry the on-call burden for the system that delivers your customers' events.; Portkey the free Developer tier records only 10,000 logs per month with 3 day log retention; the $49 per month Production tier raises that to 100,000 logs with $9 per additional 100,000 requests, as of August 2026.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Convoy and Portkey actually diverge.

Attributes where Convoy and Portkey differ
Attribute	Convoy	Portkey
Starting price	Free	On request
Pricing model	Per month, flat rate regardless of volume	Unknown
Free tier	Yes	No
Platforms	Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud	Web

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (APIs).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Convoy

Inbound and outbound
Broker-driven ingestion
Payload transformation
Portal links
Circuit breaking
Retry policies
OpenTelemetry export
Role-based access control

Only in Portkey

Nothing recorded that Convoy does not also cover.

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Convoy

A fintech that cannot route customer webhook traffic through a third-party SaaS for compliance reasonsnot Portkey
A high-volume platform for which per-message webhook pricing costs more than the flat premium licencenot Portkey
A team that also receives webhooks from many providers and wants ingestion, verification and deduplication in the same gatewaynot Portkey
An engineering group that wants webhook delivery driven directly from an existing Kafka or SQS topicnot Portkey

Portkey

Accessing 1,600+ language models through unified API gatewaynot Convoy
Monitoring and observing LLM behavior in production environmentsnot Convoy
Managing costs and setting budget limits for AI spendingnot Convoy
Implementing guardrails and PII redaction for secure AI interactionsnot Convoy

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Convoy

The default deployment is self-hosted, so you operate Convoy plus Postgres and Redis and carry the on-call burden for the system that delivers your customers' events.
Frain Technologies is a small startup, and putting customer-facing delivery infrastructure on it means accepting real vendor continuity risk on a component that is hard to swap out quickly.
The premium tier at a flat 999 US dollars a month is poor value below substantial volume, while the community edition omits the portal, transformations and RBAC that most production deployments end up wanting.
The hosted cloud trial is capped at one project and 100 events a day, which is too small to properly evaluate the service before committing.
Documentation and the third-party ecosystem are thinner than the established webhook services, so unusual configurations often mean reading the Go source.

Portkey

The free Developer tier records only 10,000 logs per month with 3 day log retention; the $49 per month Production tier raises that to 100,000 logs with $9 per additional 100,000 requests, as of August 2026.

Pricing, plan by plan

Convoy

Free

CommunityFree
- Self-hosted open source gateway
- Inbound and outbound webhooks
- Automatic retries and message broker support
Premium$999/month
- Flat rate irrespective of message volume
- Portal links and payload transformation
- RBAC, circuit breaking and white labelling
Enterprise$undefined/year
- SAML SSO
- Dedicated support with SLA
- On-premises deployment assistance
Cloud$undefined/month
- Hosted by Convoy
- 14 day trial limited to one project and 100 events a day
- Usage-based tiers above the trial

Portkey

On request

No published plan breakdown. See the Portkey review.

Which should you pick?

Choose Convoy if

You need inbound and outbound.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud.
You also want broker-driven ingestion.

Convoy review

Choose Portkey if

Nothing in the data separates Portkey from Convoy on the points above - pick on price and on how each one feels to use.

Portkey review

Questions people ask

Is Convoy or Portkey better?: Neither clearly leads. Convoy starts at Free and Portkey at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Convoy or Portkey?: Convoy has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Convoy and On request for Portkey.
Does Convoy or Portkey run on more platforms?: Convoy runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud. Portkey runs on Web.
Can I use Convoy for free?: Yes. Convoy has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Portkey starts at On request.
What is Convoy best used for?: Convoy is most often used for a fintech that cannot route customer webhook traffic through a third-party saas for compliance reasons, a high-volume platform for which per-message webhook pricing costs more than the flat premium licence, a team that also receives webhooks from many providers and wants ingestion, verification and deduplication in the same gateway, an engineering group that wants webhook delivery driven directly from an existing kafka or sqs topic. Of those, a fintech that cannot route customer webhook traffic through a third-party saas for compliance reasons and a high-volume platform for which per-message webhook pricing costs more than the flat premium licence are not what Portkey is typically brought in for.
What can Convoy do that Portkey cannot?: Convoy covers Inbound and outbound, Broker-driven ingestion, Payload transformation, Portal links.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Convoy: Is Convoy really open source?

Yes, the community edition is open source and self-hostable, covering both inbound and outbound webhooks with retries.

Portkey: What happens if I exceed my Portkey plan's request limit?

Production tier ($49/month) charges $9 per additional 100,000 requests beyond the included 100,000. Enterprise customers have custom limits determined through their service agreement. Source: https://portkey.ai/pricing

Source

Convoy: What does premium cost?

A flat 999 US dollars a month, self-hosted, regardless of message volume.

Portkey: Can I self-host Portkey to avoid per-request billing?

Yes. Portkey offers an Open Source self-hosted version with unlimited requests at no cost, including universal API, routing, guardrails, and load balancing features. Source: https://portkey.ai/pricing

Source

Convoy: Does it receive webhooks as well as send them?

Yes, inbound ingestion with verification and deduplication is a first-class feature, unlike most webhook services.

Portkey: How long does Portkey retain my logs and metrics?

Free Developer tier retains logs 3 days and metrics 30 days. Production tier retains logs 30 days and metrics 90 days. Enterprise tier offers custom retention periods. Source: https://portkey.ai/pricing

Source

Convoy: Do I have to self-host?

No, there is a hosted cloud, but the trial is capped at 100 events a day and self-hosting is the primary model.

Portkey: What compliance features are included in the Enterprise plan?

Enterprise tier includes SOC2 Type 2 certification, GDPR compliance, HIPAA compliance, VPC hosting, SSO, advanced guardrails, and dedicated support. Custom pricing required. Source: https://portkey.ai/pricing

Source

Convoy vs Portkey

Convoy

Portkey

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Convoy

Only in Portkey

What people use each for

Convoy

Portkey

Where each one falls short

Convoy

Portkey

Pricing, plan by plan

Convoy

Portkey

Which should you pick?

Choose Convoy if

Choose Portkey if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Convoy

More on Portkey

Keep looking

Other head to heads