head to head · open source
headroom vs Portkey AI Gateway
headroom has 78,773 GitHub stars, 6,155 forks, 643 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Portkey AI Gateway has 13,317 stars, 1,365 forks, 262 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. headroom leads on adoption by 492% (78,773 vs 13,317 stars). headroom is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Portkey AI Gateway is written in TypeScript under MIT. headroom has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Portkey AI Gateway 10%. headroom was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (langchain, llm, mcp), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| headroom | Portkey AI Gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 79K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-05-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick headroom if
- You weight community size — 79K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Portkey AI Gateway if
- You want the Portkey AI Gateway feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Portkey AI Gateway fits your workflow better
About headroom
Quickstart · Install · Proof · Agents · Docs · Discord · llms.txt AI agents / LLMs: read /llms.txt here, or fetch the live index · full docs blob . Headroom compresses everything your AI agent reads — tool outputs, logs, RAG chunks, files, and conversation history — before it reaches the LLM. Same answers, fraction of the tokens. Compression runs on your machine; no prompt or file content is sent anywhere to be compressed. 10,144 → 1,260 tokens. The same FATAL found. What it does Library — compress(messages) in Python or TypeScript, inline in any app. Proxy — headroom proxy port 8787 , zero code changes, any…
read the full headroom overview →
About Portkey AI Gateway
English 中文 日本語 [!IMPORTANT] :rocket: Gateway 2.0 (Pre Release) Portkey's core enterprise gateway is merging into open source with our 2.0 release. You can try the pre release branch here. Read more about what's next for Portkey in our Series A announcement . 🆕 Portkey Models Open source LLM pricing for 2,300+ models across 40+ providers. Explore → AI Gateway Route to 250+ LLMs with 1 fast & friendly API Docs Enterprise Hosted Gateway Changelog API Reference The AI Gateway is designed for fast, reliable & secure routing to 1600+ language, vision, audio, and image models. It is a lightweight, open source, and…
read the full Portkey AI Gateway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is headroom or Portkey AI Gateway more popular?
headroom has 78,773 GitHub stars and Portkey AI Gateway has 13,317. headroom has the larger community by that measure.
Are headroom and Portkey AI Gateway free?
Both are open source. headroom is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Portkey AI Gateway under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between headroom and Portkey AI Gateway?
headroom is written in Python and Portkey AI Gateway in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, headroom or Portkey AI Gateway?
Choose headroom if you want the larger community (78,773 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Portkey AI Gateway if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.