Evaluation guide
Already running LiteLLM, Portkey, or Kong? Here's where PII redaction fits
- 01Identify sensitive valuesDetect
- 02Replace with stable tokensMask
- 03On API traffic, restore inside your boundaryRestore
Direct answer
LiteLLM, Portkey, and Kong AI Gateway are built to route and manage requests across multiple model providers, load balancing, fallback, retries, and cost tracking, not primarily to detect personal data. PII masking is usually handled through a plugin, middleware hook, or a separate service called from within the gateway, rather than being the gateway's core function.
Routing gateways solve a different problem than redaction
LiteLLM, Portkey, and Kong AI Gateway exist to make calling multiple LLM providers manageable: a consistent interface across providers, automatic fallback when one is down, request-level cost and usage tracking, and caching. That's a real and separate problem from detecting personal data in a prompt before it leaves an organization's control.
Some of these gateways expose hooks or plugins that can call an external service, including a redaction API, as part of the request lifecycle. That makes them a reasonable place to enforce a policy, but the detection logic itself typically comes from elsewhere.
Where PII masking plugs into an existing gateway
The common pattern is a pre-request hook: the gateway intercepts the outbound prompt, sends it to a redaction service, and forwards the transformed version to the model provider only after sensitive values are handled. The same hook point can apply consistent policy across every provider a team routes through, rather than requiring a separate integration per model.
- Pre-request hooks call an external redaction service before the prompt reaches a provider
- Policy can apply uniformly across every provider a gateway routes to
- The gateway still owns routing, retries, and cost tracking; redaction is a separate concern plugged into it
Running a gateway and a redaction layer together
Teams already invested in LiteLLM, Portkey, or Kong for routing don't need to replace that investment to add PII redaction, the more common integration is calling a redaction layer from within the gateway's existing hook system, so routing and data protection stay as separate, independently maintained concerns.
Maskflare sits at that hook point: as a base-URL change, as a mask call from a gateway's pre-request hook, or as a ready-made guardrail for LiteLLM (pip install 'maskflare[litellm]'), without requiring a team to move off the routing layer it already runs.
Related PII guidance
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to replace LiteLLM or Portkey to add PII redaction?
No. Redaction is typically added as a call from within the gateway's existing hook or plugin system, not as a replacement for the routing layer.
Does routing through a gateway already protect personal data?
Not by default. Routing gateways manage provider selection, retries, and cost, they don't inspect prompt content for personal data unless a redaction step is explicitly added to the request path.
Which gateway hook point should call the redaction service?
Whichever pre-request hook the gateway exposes before the prompt is forwarded to a model provider, so redaction happens before the sensitive value ever leaves the organization's boundary.