Overview

Helicone brings gateway routing, request logging, and analysis together, with access to more than 100 models through the OpenAI SDK by changing the model name. Its stated acquisition by Mintlify and maintenance-mode status make it a more cautious choice for new, strategic deployments: services remain live, with security updates, new models, and bug and performance fixes continuing.

Key features

The gateway offers smart load balancing, automatic failovers, and response caching across providers. Those capabilities can simplify a multi-provider setup, while real-time request logs and visualizations of multi-step LLM interactions help teams investigate errors and follow application behavior.

Integrations include OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, LiteLLM, Anyscale, Together AI, and OpenRouter. Helicone also supports cost and token tracking, LLM and agent tracing, retrieval tracing, evaluations, and prompt management. Its LangGraph integration adds visibility into LLM calls, session tracking, performance metrics, and cost monitoring. An API cost calculator covers more than 300 models and providers.

Helicone describes itself as open source and invites community contributions. Teams can deploy it in their own infrastructure through single-click deployment or a production-ready Helm chart. The company states that its cloud is SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant; the Team plan specifically includes SOC-2 and HIPAA compliance.

Pricing

Helicone is freemium, with a free plan and a 7-day trial that requires no credit card. The plans billed monthly are Pro at 79.00 USD per month and Team at 799.00 USD per month. Usage-based charges apply to both paid tiers in addition to 10,000 free requests; Enterprise has custom pricing.

Plan	Includes	Best fit
Hobby	0.00 USD per free; 10,000 free requests, 1 GB storage, 1 seat, 1 organization, 7 days retention, and 10 logs/min ingestion.	Individual evaluation or a small prototype that can live with short retention and low ingestion capacity.
Pro	79.00 USD per month, billed per month; 10,000 free requests plus usage-based charges, unlimited seats, 1 organization, 1 month retention, 1,000 logs/min ingestion, and 10 API calls/min.	A team that needs shared access and higher ingestion without multiple organizations.
Team	799.00 USD per month, billed per month; 10,000 free requests plus usage-based charges, unlimited seats, 5 organizations, 3 months retention, 15,000 logs/min ingestion, 60 API calls/min, and SOC-2 and HIPAA compliance.	Organizations needing more ingestion headroom, longer retention, several organizations, or the stated compliance coverage.
Enterprise	Custom pricing; custom MSA, SAML SSO, on-prem deployment, bulk cloud discounts, unlimited seats and organizations, and forever retention.	Teams requiring enterprise contracting, SSO, on-prem deployment, or uncapped retention.

Hobby's one seat, one organization, and seven-day retention make it a constrained starting point, not a durable shared workspace. Pro removes the seat limit and extends retention to a month, but still allows only one organization and caps API calls at 10 per minute. Team raises those limits substantially, though its monthly price is a sharp step up. The 7-day trial is brief; the free plan's request, storage, retention, and ingestion caps are the practical constraints to check first.

Platforms

Helicone supports API, web, and self-hosted use. Its deployment flexibility is useful for teams that need infrastructure control, while cloud customers have the stated SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR posture. Enterprise adds on-prem deployment and SAML SSO.

Who it's for

Helicone makes the most sense for teams already building with multiple LLM providers that want routing, tracing, and cost visibility in one workflow, especially if they need self-hosting or LangGraph instrumentation. It is a weaker fit for a team choosing a platform to anchor future development: maintenance mode means ongoing product development should not be assumed beyond the continuing updates Helicone describes.

Pros and cons

Pros: Access to more than 100 models through the OpenAI SDK and routing features can reduce friction in multi-provider applications.
Pros: Real-time logs, multi-step visualizations, tracing, and cost tools bring debugging and spend monitoring into the same platform.
Pros: Self-hosting, including a production-ready Helm chart, gives infrastructure-conscious teams a deployment option beyond cloud.
Cons: Maintenance mode limits confidence in Helicone as a platform for a new long-term dependency.
Cons: The Hobby plan's 1 GB storage, seven-day retention, and 10 logs/min ingestion constrain sustained or collaborative use.
Cons: Pro costs 79.00 USD per month before usage-based charges and retains data for only one month; Team's expanded limits cost 799.00 USD per month.

Alternatives

For a narrower API analytics need, compare the API Analytics Software category; for gateway-first selection, see LLM gateways. Teams focused on tracing and monitoring can browse LLM Observability Tools, AI Agent Observability Tools, AI LLM Observability Tools, and Model Monitoring Software.

KeepRouter is a freemium API and web option whose free plan charges $0 per input and output token, making it worth considering for testing, prototyping, and evaluation without a monthly fee.
Langfuse is a freemium API, self-hosted, and web alternative; its Hobby plan includes 50k units per month, 30 days of data access, and two users.
Revenium offers a free Observe plan with 100,000 transactions per month and seven days of retention, a fit for teams comparing a stated transaction-based free tier.
AI Nazar is a free, open-source option for teams who want an SDK and dashboard under the MIT license.
API Analytics is free and supports API, self-hosted, and web deployments, with up to 1 million stored requests per user before older requests are replaced.
BetterMeter is a freemium API and web option with 30-day event retention.
Moesif is a freemium API analytics option with self-hosted support and a 14-day trial that includes Growth features and 10,000,000 events.
Apiable uses custom quotes priced per portal, with a platform fee based on connected API gateways.

Verdict

Choose Helicone if your team needs multi-provider routing plus LLM tracing and cost analysis, and values a self-hosted option. Its breadth is compelling for that combined job, but maintenance mode is the clearest reason to look elsewhere when selecting a platform for continued product evolution.

	AI Nazar	Helicone
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Free trial	No	Yes
Paid from	Free	$79/mo
Open source	No	No
Platforms	api, self-hosted, Web	api, self-hosted, Web
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Latency analytics	Yes	—
Deployment model	hybrid	—
Paid from	—	79 /mo

AI Nazar vs Helicone

AI Nazar

Helicone