head to head · open source
ponytail vs Portkey AI Gateway
ponytail has 141,230 GitHub stars, 7,572 forks, 270 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Portkey AI Gateway has 13,022 stars, 1,305 forks, 262 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. ponytail leads on adoption by 985% (141,230 vs 13,022 stars). ponytail is written in JavaScript under MIT; Portkey AI Gateway is written in TypeScript under MIT. ponytail has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Portkey AI Gateway 10%. ponytail was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (llm), 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
| ponytail | Portkey AI Gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 141K | ★ 13K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-05-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.6K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ponytail if
- You weight community size — 141K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- 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 ponytail
Ponytail is an open source agent skill for JavaScript and LLM based coding tools that makes an AI agent write the minimum working code for a task, and it is built for developers and teams running agents such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor against real repositories.
read the full ponytail overview →
About Portkey AI Gateway
Portkey AI Gateway is an open source TypeScript project that routes AI application requests through one API to many language, vision, audio, and image models. It belongs to the AI development platform ecosystem and is described as an AI gateway, LLM gateway, and generative AI gateway. The project is licensed under MIT, and its topics include llmops, langchain, mcp, mcp client, and mcp gateway.
read the full Portkey AI Gateway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ponytail or Portkey AI Gateway more popular?
ponytail has 141,230 GitHub stars and Portkey AI Gateway has 13,022. ponytail has the larger community by that measure.
Are ponytail and Portkey AI Gateway free?
Both are open source. ponytail is licensed under MIT and Portkey AI Gateway under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ponytail and Portkey AI Gateway?
ponytail is written in JavaScript 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, ponytail or Portkey AI Gateway?
Choose ponytail if you want the larger community (141,230 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Portkey AI Gateway if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.