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ToolAutomationfreemiumactive8-8.9
8.3/10Strong
Active

Free 10k req/mo / Pro $79/mo / Team $799/mo / Enterprise custom

Best plan

Free 10k req/mo / Pro $79/mo / Team $799/mo / Enterprise custom

Risk: Observability tools sit in sensitive prompt/data paths...

Try Helicone free

Editorial · no paid placements

Should you use it?

Helicone is an open-source LLM observability and AI Gateway platform that integrates in one line of code. Free Hobby tier covers 10,000 requests/month, no credit card. Pro is $79/mo with unlimited seats, Team is $799/mo with SOC-2 and HIPAA, and Enterprise adds SAML SSO plus on-prem options. The AI Gateway adds 0% markup provider credits, unified access to 100+ models, caching, fallback, rate limits, and cost tracking. Pick it for production LLM apps needing cost, quality, and reliability visibility.

  • Buy ifDevelopers shipping LLM-powered products
  • PickFree 10k req/mo / Pro $79/mo / Team $799/mo / Enterprise custom
  • Skip ifTeams already committed to LangSmith (LangChain's in-house)

Plan guidance

What to buy

Best planFree 10k req/mo / Pro $79/mo / Team $799/mo / Enterprise custom

Watch: Observability tools sit in sensitive prompt/data paths...

Price rangeFree 10k req/mo / Pro $79/mo / Team $799/mo / Enterprise custom

$0 / $79/mo / $799/mo / Custom

Upgrade only ifNot for teams already committed to langsmith (langchain's in-house)

Observability tools sit in sensitive prompt/data paths...

Current pricing source: Helicone pricing

Fit

Use it for this, skip it for that

Best for

  • Developers shipping LLM-powered products
  • Teams running multi-provider LLM workloads
  • Observability into cost, latency, and quality across users
  • LangGraph / agent workflow debugging

Avoid if

  • Teams already committed to LangSmith (LangChain's in-house)
  • Simple single-prompt prototypes (overkill)
  • Non-LLM application observability (use Datadog / Sentry)
Watch out
Observability tools sit in sensitive prompt/data paths; review PII handling, retention, self-host options, sampling, and incident response before routing production traffic.

Recent changes

Only what affects the decision

  1. Hobby / Pro / Team / Enterprise

    Reverified public pricing and docs. Gateway docs still emphasize provider routing, cost optimization, caching, custom rate limits, and observability

    Helicone pricing
  2. Hobby / Pro / Team / Enterprise

    Reverified public pricing. Current docs also position the AI Gateway around 100+ models, 0% markup credits, bring-your-own provider keys, caching, fallbacks, and observability

    Helicone pricing
  3. Hobby / Pro / Team / Enterprise

    Pricing now formalized: Hobby free (10k req, 1GB storage, 1 seat), Pro $79/mo (unlimited seats, alerts, HQL), Team $799/mo (SOC-2/HIPAA, 5 orgs, Slack support), Enterprise custom (SAML SSO...

    Helicone pricing

Alternatives

Best swaps

Microsoft Agent Framework

Microsoft's open-source agentic AI engine, merging Semantic Kernel and AutoGen, now sitting beside the Work IQ, Foundry, Copilot

Free (open source) · 9/10Langfuse

Open-source LLM engineering platform for observability, prompt management, evals, datasets, and OpenTelemetry tracing. ClickHous

$0 free / $29 Core / $199 Pro / $2,499 Enterprise · 8.8/10LangGraph

LangChain's low-level orchestration runtime for long-running, stateful AI agents. MIT-licensed Python and JavaScript libraries;

$0 library / $39 Plus / LCU/LSU usage meters · 8.8/10
Build comparison
Proof and score mathVerified Jun 25

Proof

Why this recommendation is trusted

EvidenceHelicone official site
Source
Registered source
Freshness
Review due
Confidence
Low confidence
Verified
Review
Volatility
Volatile

Stale source helicone-pricing.

Editorial score

Unweighted average of 4 axes · confidence high

  • Utility9/10

    How much real work it can do for a competent operator, end to end.

  • Value9/10

    What you get for the dollar relative to the closest alternative.

  • Moat7/10

    How hard it would be for a competitor to replicate the underlying advantage.

  • Longevity8/10

    How likely the product is to still be best-in-class 24 months out.

Verified facts

  1. Best ForBest for teams that need LLM observability, gateway controls, logging, cost tracking, and debugging across AI app traffic.
    highDrifts2026-06-25Helicone official site
  2. Pricing AnchorHelicone pricing is Hobby free (10k req/mo), Pro $79/mo with unlimited seats and usage-based scaling, Team $799/mo with SOC-2/HIPAA and 5 orgs, and Enterprise custom with SSO and on-prem options.
    highVolatile2026-06-25Helicone pricing
  3. Watch Out ForObservability tools sit in sensitive prompt/data paths; review PII handling, retention, self-host options, sampling, and incident response before routing production traffic.
    highDrifts2026-06-25Helicone docs
  4. Open Source Or LocalHelicone is open source and offers cloud plus self-host/deployment paths for observability and AI Gateway use cases, so buyers can evaluate repository activity, deployment model, data handling, and self-hosting fit as part of procurement.
    highDrifts2026-06-25Helicone GitHub repository
  5. Integration SurfaceDocs are the source of truth for SDK/proxy setup, provider support, logging, prompt tracing, experiments, AI Gateway routing, cost optimization, caching, custom rate limits, pass-through billing, and provider-key configuration.
    highDrifts2026-06-25Helicone docs
Open SourceRecent activity
Helicone/helicone
5,817stars
601forks
TypeScriptlanguage
Apache-2.0license
1 month agolast commit
View on GitHub
Full review notesLong-form details, FAQ, and source history

Open-source observability for LLM applications. Drop one line into your OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or LiteLLM client config and every request gets logged, traced, costed, and available for replay in the Helicone dashboard.

As of June 25, 2026, Helicone also leans hard into the AI Gateway: unified access to 100+ models, model-cost routing, bring-your-own provider keys, caching, custom rate limits, automatic fallbacks, and complete observability from the same integration path.

System Verdict

Pick Helicone if you’re shipping an LLM-powered product and need to see what’s happening under the hood. The one-line integration is genuinely one line. Prompt-level cost tracking, latency distributions, per-user analytics, and a prompt playground for iteration all ship in the free tier.

Skip it if you’re already committed to LangSmith. LangChain’s first-party observability integrates more deeply with LangChain/LangGraph than any third-party tool. If you’re deep in that ecosystem and don’t mind LangSmith’s pricing, stick with it.

Helicone’s edge over LangSmith: multi-provider support is first-class (LangSmith is LangChain-centric), the AI Gateway adds real production features (caching saves 30-80% on repeated prompts, failover prevents OpenAI outages from killing your app), and the free tier is meaningfully usable (10k requests/mo vs LangSmith’s smaller limits).

Key Facts
LicenseOpen source (self-hostable)
Hobby (free)10,000 requests/month, 1 GB storage, 1 seat, no credit card
Pro$79/mo, unlimited seats, alerts, reports, HQL, usage-based above 10K
Team$799/mo, SOC-2 and HIPAA, 5 organizations, dedicated Slack support
EnterpriseCustom with SAML SSO, MSA, on-prem deployment
Integration effortOne line of code (changes base URL or adds proxy)
ProvidersOpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, Groq, Together, any OpenAI-compatible
Core observabilityTraces, sessions, metrics (cost, latency, quality), user analytics
AI Gateway featuresLoad balancing, caching, automatic failover, rate limiting
Gateway billingHelicone credits with 0% markup, or bring your own provider keys
Current public scale signals10B requests processed, 2.5T tokens/month, 64.9M users tracked (vendor-reported)
Integrations (2026)LangGraph, LiteLLM, Vercel AI SDK, OpenAI Realtime API, OpenAI-compatible clients
Backed byY Combinator (W23)

When to pick Helicone

  • Production LLM apps. Log every request, debug why a prompt degraded, catch cost runaways before the end-of-month bill.
  • Multi-provider workloads. Route between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, Groq, Together, Bedrock, Azure, or OpenAI-compatible endpoints based on latency, cost, and fallback needs; Helicone tracks the traffic either way.
  • Cost optimization. Prompt caching alone typically saves 30-80% on repeated-prompt workloads. The gateway handles it.
  • Agent workflow debugging. LangGraph integration shows you exactly what each node in a graph did, including tool calls and state changes.
  • Self-hosted preference. Open-source core lets you run Helicone on your own infrastructure.

When to pick something else

  • LangChain-centric shops: LangSmith integrates deeper. If you’re all-in on LangChain, stay there.
  • Prompt management + evals focus: Langfuse overlaps and has a stronger prompt management story.
  • App-wide observability: Datadog, New Relic, Sentry for full-stack; Helicone is LLM-specific.
  • Simple prototypes: Direct provider dashboards (OpenAI Usage, Anthropic Console) suffice until you have real scale.

Pricing

Helicone ships a cloud-hosted service with generous free tier plus optional self-hosting.

PlanPriceWhat’s included
Hobby$010,000 requests/month, 1 GB storage, 1 seat, 1 org
Pro$79/moEverything in Hobby plus unlimited seats, alerts, reports, HQL query language, usage-based scaling
Team$799/moEverything in Pro plus 5 organizations, SOC-2 and HIPAA compliance, dedicated Slack support
EnterpriseCustomSAML SSO, MSA agreements, on-prem deployment options
Self-hosted$0Run Helicone on your own infrastructure

Usage-based pricing applies above the 10K free tier (calculator estimates vary by request volume, storage, and integration path). AI Gateway credits use provider-cost pass-through positioning; observability-only deployments can bring their own provider keys. See helicone.ai/pricing and Helicone docs for current paid-tier details. Verified 2026-06-25.

Failure modes
  • Free tier caps at 10k requests/month. Small production apps can blow through this in days. Plan the upgrade path or self-host.
  • Proxy vs async logging tradeoff. Helicone-as-proxy adds latency (~5-20ms). Async logging avoids latency but can miss logs during failures. Know which mode you’re in.
  • Prompt caching needs cache-aware prompt design. If your prompts include timestamps or random nonces, cache hit rate is zero.
  • Not a replacement for prompt eval harnesses. For systematic evaluation of prompt changes, use Helicone’s evals + a dedicated eval tool (Braintrust, Promptfoo).
  • Gateway adds a hop. applications (real-time voice, sub-100ms SLA), the extra proxy hop matters.

Against the alternatives

HeliconeLangfuseLangSmithBraintrust
Open sourceYesYes (MIT)NoNo
Free tier10k req/mo50k units/moLimitedLimited
AI Gateway (proxy features)YesNoNoNo
LangChain integrationGoodGoodBest (native)Good
Self-hostedYesYesNoNo
Best forMulti-provider productionEvals + prompt mgmtLangChain-centric teamsEval-heavy teams

Methodology

Produced by the aipedia.wiki editorial pipeline. Last verified 2026-06-25 against helicone.ai, Helicone pricing, Helicone docs, Helicone gateway cost-tracking docs, and the Helicone GitHub repository.

FAQ

Is Helicone really free? The Hobby cloud free tier covers 10,000 requests/month with no credit card. Self-hosting is free forever under the open-source license. Pro at $79/mo unlocks unlimited seats, alerts, reports, and the HQL query language; Team at $799/mo adds SOC-2 and HIPAA compliance with 5 organizations.

How does Helicone compare to Langfuse? Helicone emphasizes the AI Gateway (caching, failover, load balancing). Langfuse emphasizes prompt management and evals. Many teams use both. Both are free-tier generous.

Does Helicone work with Claude Code or Cursor? Both tools call LLM APIs; if you configure those APIs to route through Helicone, yes. For Claude Code, you’d set a custom Anthropic base URL. For Cursor, it’s harder because Cursor manages its own API config.

What’s the AI Gateway? A high-performance proxy that sits in front of LLM providers. It can use Helicone credits with 0% markup or bring-your-own provider keys, then add unified access to 100+ models, caching, automatic failover, load balancing, rate limiting, and observability. Functionally like an API gateway, but LLM-aware.

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Cite this pageFor journalists, researchers, and bloggers
According to aipedia.wiki Editorial at aipedia.wiki (https://aipedia.wiki/tools/helicone/)
aipedia.wiki Editorial. (2026). Helicone: Editorial Review. aipedia.wiki. Retrieved August 3, 2026, from https://aipedia.wiki/tools/helicone/
aipedia.wiki Editorial. "Helicone: Editorial Review." aipedia.wiki, 2026, https://aipedia.wiki/tools/helicone/. Accessed August 3, 2026.
aipedia.wiki Editorial. 2026. "Helicone: Editorial Review." aipedia.wiki. https://aipedia.wiki/tools/helicone/.
@misc{helicone-editorial-review-2026, author = {{aipedia.wiki Editorial}}, title = {Helicone: Editorial Review}, year = {2026}, publisher = {aipedia.wiki}, url = {https://aipedia.wiki/tools/helicone/}, note = {Accessed: 2026-08-02} }
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