MCP Gateway observability

MCP Gateway is available on Portkey Cloud. For the complete observability reference, see portkey.ai/docs/product/mcp-gateway.

What gets logged

The MCP Gateway logs every tool call that passes through it. Each log entry captures:

Field	Description
`timestamp`	When the tool call was made (UTC)
`request_id`	Unique identifier for the request
`user`	Authenticated user who made the call
`team`	Team the user belongs to
`server`	MCP server the tool call was routed to
`tool`	Name of the tool that was called
`params`	Parameters passed to the tool
`response`	Response returned by the tool
`status`	`success`, `error`, or `denied`
`latency_ms`	End-to-end latency in milliseconds
`error`	Error message if the call failed

Denied requests (blocked by access control) are also logged with status: denied, giving you a complete audit trail of both successful and rejected calls.

Viewing logs in the Portkey dashboard

The Portkey dashboard provides a real-time log viewer for all MCP tool calls in your workspace:

Live feed — new tool calls appear as they happen
Search and filter — filter by user, team, server, tool name, status, or time range
Request detail — click any log entry to see the full parameters and response
Latency charts — visualize latency trends per server or tool

Log structure

Logs are structured JSON. Each tool call produces an entry like:

example log entry

{
  "timestamp": "2024-01-15T14:32:01.234Z",
  "request_id": "req_01j8abc123xyz",
  "user": "alice@example.com",
  "team": "engineering",
  "server": "github",
  "tool": "search_repositories",
  "params": {
    "query": "portkey-ai",
    "limit": 10
  },
  "response": {
    "repositories": [
      { "name": "gateway", "stars": 10998 }
    ]
  },
  "status": "success",
  "latency_ms": 312
}

Exporting logs

Logs can be exported from the Portkey dashboard in JSON or CSV format, or forwarded in real time to external observability platforms (Datadog, Splunk, Grafana Loki, and others) via webhook integrations configured in the dashboard.

Alerting

Use any log-based alerting system with exported logs. Common alerts to configure:

High error rate — more than X% of tool calls returning errors in a time window
Denied requests spike — unusually high number of access-denied events (potential credential misuse)
Latency degradation — latency exceeding a threshold for a given server
Unexpected tool access — a specific sensitive tool being called unexpectedly

Denied request logs include the user, team, server, and tool that was blocked — useful for auditing and detecting unauthorized access attempts.

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What gets logged

Viewing logs in the Portkey dashboard

Log structure

Exporting logs

Alerting

Learn more

​What gets logged

​Viewing logs in the Portkey dashboard

​Log structure

​Exporting logs

​Alerting

​Learn more

What gets logged

Viewing logs in the Portkey dashboard

Log structure

Exporting logs

Alerting

Learn more