Migrating from Portkey

Portkey ships a similar concept (gateway with plugins). prxy.monster differs in three areas: pipeline composability, local mode, and pricing.

What’s the same

• Gateway sits between your app and the provider.
• OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible endpoints.
• Caching, retries, fallbacks all available.
• Observability via metadata + custom tags.

What’s different

Diff: env vars

- PORTKEY_API_KEY=pk-xxx
- # Plus a header on every call: x-portkey-config={"id":"..."}
+ ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://api.prxy.monster
+ ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=prxy_live_xxx
+ # Or for OpenAI shape:
+ OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.prxy.monster/v1
+ OPENAI_API_KEY=prxy_live_xxx

Portkey requires a custom header (x-portkey-config) on every call. prxy.monster either uses your key’s stored pipeline config OR a per-request x-prxy-pipe header — your choice.

Mapping Portkey configs → prxy pipelines

Portkey config:

{
  "strategy": { "mode": "fallback" },
  "targets": [
    { "provider": "anthropic", "virtual_key": "..." },
    { "provider": "openai", "virtual_key": "..." }
  ],
  "cache": { "mode": "semantic", "max_age": 3600 }
}

Equivalent prxy.monster pipeline (using v1.1 router for fallback):

pipeline:
  - semantic-cache:
      similarity: 0.85
      ttlSeconds: 3600
  - router:
      strategy: 'fallback'
      fallback_chain: [claude-sonnet-4-6, gpt-4o]

Mapping Portkey guardrails

Portkey ships built-in PII detection, profanity filters, etc., as guardrails. prxy.monster’s guardrails module (v1.1) covers the same ground:

guardrails:
  pii_redact: true
  profanity_block: false
  custom_patterns: ['/sk-[a-zA-Z0-9]{32,}/']

Switch in 60 seconds

# 1. Sign up at prxy.monster
# 2. Copy your API key
# 3. Replace Portkey env + headers with one BASE_URL change
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://api.prxy.monster
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=prxy_live_xxx
# 4. Set your pipeline once (env var or dashboard)
export PRXY_PIPE='exact-cache,semantic-cache,cost-guard,patterns'

Your code doesn’t change. The custom header goes away.

What you gain

• Local mode — run on your own hardware for sensitive workloads. Portkey is hosted-only.
• Persistent memory — patterns learns from your specific use case, not just caches.
• Composable modules in code — write a custom module instead of being constrained to declarative configs.