Portkey Tracing

How to trace Portkey AI Gateway requests with Phoenix for comprehensive LLM observability

Phoenix provides seamless integration with Portkey, the AI Gateway and observability platform that routes to 200+ LLMs with enterprise-grade features including guardrails, caching, and load balancing.

Launch Phoenix

Phoenix Cloud

Sign up for Phoenix:

1. Sign up for an Arize Phoenix account at https://app.phoenix.arize.com/login

2. Click Create Space, then follow the prompts to create and launch your space.

Install packages:

pip install arize-phoenix-otel

Set your Phoenix endpoint and API Key:

From your new Phoenix Space

1. Create your API key from the Settings page

2. Copy your Hostname from the Settings page

3. In your code, set your endpoint and API key:

import os

os.environ["PHOENIX_API_KEY"] = "ADD YOUR PHOENIX API KEY"
os.environ["PHOENIX_COLLECTOR_ENDPOINT"] = "ADD YOUR PHOENIX HOSTNAME"

# If you created your Phoenix Cloud instance before June 24th, 2025,
# you also need to set the API key as a header:
# os.environ["PHOENIX_CLIENT_HEADERS"] = f"api_key={os.getenv('PHOENIX_API_KEY')}"

Having trouble finding your endpoint? Check out Finding your Phoenix Endpoint

Command Line

Launch your local Phoenix instance:

pip install arize-phoenix
phoenix serve

For details on customizing a local terminal deployment, see Terminal Setup.

Install packages:

pip install arize-phoenix-otel

Set your Phoenix endpoint:

import os

os.environ["PHOENIX_COLLECTOR_ENDPOINT"] = "http://localhost:6006"

See Terminal for more details.

Docker

Pull latest Phoenix image from Docker Hub:

docker pull arizephoenix/phoenix:latest

Run your containerized instance:

docker run -p 6006:6006 arizephoenix/phoenix:latest

This will expose the Phoenix on localhost:6006

Install packages:

pip install arize-phoenix-otel

Set your Phoenix endpoint:

import os

os.environ["PHOENIX_COLLECTOR_ENDPOINT"] = "http://localhost:6006"

For more info on using Phoenix with Docker, see Docker.

Notebook

Install packages:

pip install arize-phoenix

Launch Phoenix:

import phoenix as px
px.launch_app()

By default, notebook instances do not have persistent storage, so your traces will disappear after the notebook is closed. See self-hosting or use one of the other deployment options to retain traces.

Install

pip install openinference-instrumentation-portkey portkey-ai

Setup

Use the register function to connect your application to Phoenix:

from phoenix.otel import register

# configure the Phoenix tracer
tracer_provider = register(
  project_name="my-portkey-app", # Default is 'default'
  auto_instrument=True # Auto-instrument your app based on installed OI dependencies
)

Run Portkey

By instrumenting Portkey, spans will be created whenever requests are made through the AI Gateway and will be sent to the Phoenix server for collection.

Basic Usage with OpenAI

import os
from openai import OpenAI
from portkey_ai import PORTKEY_GATEWAY_URL, createHeaders

# Set up your API keys
os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"] = "your-openai-api-key"
os.environ["PORTKEY_API_KEY"] = "your-portkey-api-key"  # Optional for self-hosted

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=os.environ.get("OPENAI_API_KEY"),
    base_url=PORTKEY_GATEWAY_URL,
    default_headers=createHeaders(
        provider="openai",
        api_key=os.environ.get("PORTKEY_API_KEY")
    )
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4o-mini",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What is artificial intelligence?"}]
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Using Portkey SDK Directly

from portkey_ai import Portkey

# Initialize Portkey client
portkey = Portkey(
    api_key="your-portkey-api-key",  # Optional for self-hosted
    virtual_key="your-openai-virtual-key"  # Or use provider-specific virtual keys
)

response = portkey.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4o-mini",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain machine learning"}]
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Observe

Now that you have tracing setup, all requests through Portkey's AI Gateway will be streamed to your running Phoenix instance for observability and evaluation. You'll be able to see:

• Request/Response Traces: Complete visibility into LLM interactions

• Routing Decisions: Which provider was selected and why

• Fallback Events: When and why fallbacks were triggered

• Cache Performance: Hit/miss rates and response times

• Cost Tracking: Token usage and costs across providers

• Latency Metrics: Response times for each provider and route

Resources

• Phoenix OpenInference Instrumentation