# Alternatives to Helicone Helicone is an open-source LLM observability platform offering request logging, cost and token tracking, caching, prompt management, and evaluations via a proxy or async SDK. Helicone ranks #8 of 8 in AI evaluation platforms, with an Alt Score of 76. It is licensed under Apache License 2.0, open source with paid hosting from $79/month and available on the web. 13 of 13 checklist rows are verified against a public source. Source: https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/helicone/ Category: AI evaluation platforms ## Where Helicone stands out - **Open source** — 3 of 8 apps with a verified answer have this ## Overview - **Who it's for**: AI engineering teams who need observability for LLM applications and agents, from solo developers on the free Hobby cloud tier to enterprises wanting a self-hosted, SOC 2/GDPR-compliant deployment. It integrates via a proxy/AI Gateway and SDKs with OpenAI, Anthropic, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Vercel AI SDK and 100+ other providers and frameworks. - **What you get**: A proxy-based LLM observability and gateway platform covering request tracing and sessions, cost/latency/token tracking, alerts for error rates and cost spikes, prompt management with a playground and version history, dataset curation for fine-tuning and evaluation, and score reporting for evaluation results computed by external frameworks (RAGAS, LangSmith, custom judges). The core is Apache-2.0 licensed and self-hostable via Docker, Kubernetes/Helm, or manual install. - **How it works**: Developers route LLM calls through Helicone's AI Gateway or add a one-line proxy/SDK integration so every request and response is logged automatically. Teams then inspect traces, costs, and latency in the dashboard, manage and deploy prompt versions through the gateway without code changes, curate request logs into datasets, and push evaluation scores from their own eval framework back to Helicone for centralized reporting — running either on Helicone's hosted cloud or a self-hosted instance. ## Profile - **License**: Apache License 2.0 (verified 2026-07-17) - **Pricing model**: OSS + paid hosting (verified 2026-07-17) - **Starts at**: $79/month (verified 2026-07-17) - **Platforms**: Web - **Status**: active (verified 2026-07-17) ## Ranked alternatives | # | App | Alt Score | Licence | Platforms | |---|-----|-----------|---------|-----------| | 1 | [Comet Opik](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/comet-opik.md) | 100 | Apache-2.0 | Web | | 2 | [Langfuse](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/langfuse.md) | 100 | MIT | Web | | 3 | [Arize Phoenix](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/arize-phoenix.md) | 96 | Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2) | Web | | 4 | [Braintrust](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/braintrust.md) | 96 | Proprietary (platform); MIT (autoevals library) | Web | | 5 | [HoneyHive](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/honeyhive.md) | 93 | Proprietary | Web | | 6 | [LangSmith](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/langsmith.md) | 93 | Proprietary (platform); MIT (client SDK) | Web | | 7 | [W&B Weave](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/wandb-weave.md) | 93 | Apache-2.0 | Web | Alt Score = Verified coverage (90%) + Visibility (10%). See https://altcatalog.com/how-alt-score-works/ ## Feature comparison Legend: Yes / No / Partial / ? (not verified). | AI evaluation platforms checklist | Helicone | Comet Opik | Langfuse | Arize Phoenix | Braintrust | HoneyHive | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Pricing model | OSS + paid hosting | OSS + paid hosting | OSS + paid hosting | Free | Freemium | Freemium | | Starts at | $79/month | $19/month (USD) | $29/month (USD) | Free | $249/month | Free | | License | Apache License 2.0 | Apache-2.0 | MIT | Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2) | Proprietary (platform); MIT (autoevals library) | Proprietary | | Platforms | Web | Web | Web | Web | Web | Web | | Open source | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial | No | | Self-hostable | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Tracing / observability | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Prompt playground & versioning | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Dataset management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | LLM-as-judge evals | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Human annotation / review | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Online (production) monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | A/B experiments | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | CI / regression testing | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Cost & token tracking | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Framework-agnostic SDK | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Free tier | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ## Sources Sources for Helicone. Each alternative is sourced on its own page. - **License**: Apache License 2.0 — (verified 2026-07-17) - Quote: “Apache License Version 2.0, January 2004 ... Copyright 2023 Helicone Inc” - **Pricing model**: OSS + paid hosting — (verified 2026-07-17) - Note: Core platform is Apache-2.0 and self-hostable for free (Docker/Kubernetes/manual); the hosted SaaS has a free Hobby tier plus paid usage-based Pro/Team/Enterprise tiers. - Quote: “Simple, predictable pricing Built to scale with you. Only pay for what you use.” - **Starts at**: $79/month — (verified 2026-07-17) - Quote: “Pro POPULAR $79 per month For growing teams.” - **Platforms**: Web — (verified 2026-07-17) - Note: Helicone is a web dashboard + proxy/gateway + SDKs (self-hosted or SaaS); no native desktop or mobile clients. - Quote: “Log In” - **Status**: active — (verified 2026-07-17) - Note: GitHub API metadata (not a rendered page) shows a push 12 days before research date and the repo is not archived; docs also reference an active changelog at helicone.ai/changelog. - Quote: “pushed_at: 2026-07-05T05:55:34Z, archived: false” - **Open source**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-17) - Quote: “Apache License, Version 2.0” - **Self-hostable**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-17) - Quote: “Deploy your own instance of Helicone using your preferred method. Choose the deployment option that best fits your infrastructure and scalability needs.” - **Tracing / observability**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-17) - Quote: “Observe: Inspect and debug traces & sessions for agents, chatbots, document processing pipelines, and more” - **Prompt playground & versioning**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-17) - Quote: “Build a prompt in the Playground. Save any prompt with clear commit histories and tags.” - **Dataset management**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-17) - Quote: “Curate and export LLM request/response data for fine-tuning, evaluation, and analysis” - **LLM-as-judge evals**: No — (verified 2026-07-17) - Note: Helicone only ingests/reports scores computed by external eval frameworks (RAGAS, LangSmith, custom judges); it does not run LLM-as-judge evaluations itself. The Experiments feature, which previously - Quote: “Helicone doesn't run evaluations for you - we're not an evaluation framework. Instead, we provide a centralized location to report and analyze evaluation results from any framework” - **Human annotation / review**: Partial — (verified 2026-07-17) - Note: Supports manual per-request scoring/annotation in the dashboard and end-user thumbs-up/down feedback capture, but there is no dedicated multi-annotator review-queue workflow. - Quote: “You can also add scores directly in the Helicone dashboard on the request details page. This is useful for manual evaluation or quick testing.” - **Online (production) monitoring**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-17) - Quote: “Helicone Alerts let you monitor error rates and costs on LLM requests to catch issues before they impact users.” - **A/B experiments**: No — (verified 2026-07-17) - Note: Experiments (the spreadsheet-like prompt A/B comparison tool) is deprecated/removed as of Sept 2025, well before the research date; the page is no longer indexed in the current docs sitemap. - Quote: “We are deprecating the Experiments feature and it will be removed from the platform on September 1st, 2025.” - **CI / regression testing**: No — (verified 2026-07-17) - Note: The only feature that offered prompt-regression prevention ('Prevent regression: Prompt engineering is iterative. Engineers want to prevent regression with each prompt change.') was Experiments, now d - Quote: “We are deprecating the Experiments feature and it will be removed from the platform on September 1st, 2025.” - **Cost & token tracking**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-17) - Quote: “Total Tokens | Monitor combined prompt and completion token usage ... Cost | Monitor spending to prevent budget overruns” - **Framework-agnostic SDK**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-17) - Quote: “Helicone AI Gateway integrates with most AI frameworks and development tools to give you access to 100+ LLM providers and top tier observability.” - **Free tier**: Yes — (verified 2026-07-17) - Quote: “Hobby Free Kickstart your AI project. 10,000 free requests 1 GB storage 1 seat, 1 organization” --- Ranked by verified data, never by who paid. https://altcatalog.com/trust/