Listed whether or not they pay us. Prices from each tool's own pricing page, checked Oct 16, 2026.

Helicone

Acquired: by Mintlify

Open source LLM observability and gateway: proxy based request logging, cost tracking, caching and prompt management.

Best for Quick one line LLM request logging and costs

Used Helicone and liked it? Upvote it. One upvote per person. Upvotes come from visitors, not from us, and never change "Our ranking".

What it does

Helicone is an open source platform that helps software teams route, debug, and monitor applications powered by LLMs. You send model requests, vector database queries, and tool calls through its unified gateway, and you receive centralized logging, traces, and usage analytics. It is built for developers and engineering teams shipping production AI products.

Read more: 3 features and how people use themShow less

  1. Smart LLM routing

    Directs incoming requests to the optimal language model according to speed, cost, availability, or accuracy criteria using a single interface. It provides load balancing, automatic failovers, and cached responses without requiring provider specific code rewrites.

    Use caseA developer routes traffic between OpenAI and Anthropic models through one endpoint to maintain uptime and minimize expenses during provider outages.

    From helicone.ai
  2. Helicone: Session tracing

    Session tracing

    Groups related model requests, vector database queries, and external tool executions under a common identifier and hierarchy. It lets developers visualize complete interaction paths to pinpoint errors across multi step workflows.

    Use caseAn engineer debugs an AI coding assistant by reviewing the full sequence of prompts and tool executions across user clarification turns.

    From docs.helicone.ai/features/sessions · image from Helicone

  3. User metrics and analytics

    Tracks engagement and interaction patterns across user identifiers and metadata properties. It calculates active user counts, request frequencies, retry rates, and session durations to measure application performance.

    Use caseA product team analyzes abandoned conversation points and retry rates to identify document analysis errors experienced by customers.

    From docs.helicone.ai

Written from Helicone's own website, checked . Each feature links to the page it comes from; images are Helicone's own.

Every plan

PlanMonthlyBilled yearlyPerWhat it includes
Free (Hobby)FreeNot listedper account10k requests/mo, 1 GB, 1 seat, 7 day retention
Pro$79Not listedper account10k requests + usage based, unlimited seats, 1 month retention, 7 day trial
Team$799Not listedper account5 orgs, 3 month retention, SOC 2 & HIPAA, 7 day trial
EnterpriseNot listedNot listedper accountcontact sales; SAML SSO, on prem, forever retention

From Helicone's own pricing page, checked . Prices are in US dollars per month; "billed yearly" is the monthly price when you pay for a year up front. A few figures (often the yearly price) are derived rather than printed on the page.

Before you pay

Card needed for the trial
No
What Helicone saysNo credit card required, 7 day free trial Source page
Data retention
Data retention is 7 days on Hobby, 1 month on Pro, 3 months on Team, and Forever on Enterprise.
What Helicone saysRetention | 7 days | 1 month | 3 months | Forever Source page
HIPAA
Yes, available on Team plan and above
What Helicone saysSOC 2 & HIPAA compliance Source page
Discounts
Startups get 50% off first year (under 2 years old and $5M in funding), non profits get discounts based on org size, open source companies get a $100 credit for the first year, and free for most students and educators.
What Helicone says50% off first year For startups under 2 years old and $5M in funding. Source page
Support
Community (GitHub, Discord), Chat, email, Private Slack channel, Dedicated support engineer
What Helicone saysCommunity (GitHub, Discord) | | | | | | Chat & email | | | | | | Private Slack channel | | | | | | Dedicated support engineer Source page

Only what Helicone's own pages state, with the quote behind each answer. Anything they don't publish is left out rather than guessed.

Getting started with Helicone

  1. Sign up for free and complete the onboarding flow.
  2. Generate your Helicone API key at API Keys.
  3. Configure your client to point to the base URL https://ai gateway.helicone.ai with your Helicone API key.
  4. Send your first chat completions request using your preferred model such as gpt 4o mini.
  5. View your logged request appear in the Requests tab within seconds.

Tips

  • Add credits to your account instead of managing API keys for each provider to access models with 0% markup and unified billing.
  • Bring your own provider keys instead if you want more control.
  • Switch between 100+ models simply by changing the model name in your request.

Written from Helicone's own help pages: docs.helicone.ai/getting-started/quick-start

Helicone video tutorials

Make.com tutorial - n8n AI LLM Cost Control: My Helicone Monitoring SetupQuentin Daems · 12 min
Helicone AI — The Open-source LLM Observability for Developers | Product HuntHelicone AI · 5 min

Independent creators on YouTube, not Helicone or us. The video loads from YouTube only when you press play.

What the free plan includes

Hobby: 10k requests/mo, 1 GB storage, 1 seat, 7 day retention

Questions people ask about Helicone

How much does Helicone cost?

Paid plans start at $79 a month (Pro). 4 plans are listed above, from Helicone's own pricing page.

Is Helicone free?

Yes, there is a free plan: Hobby: 10k requests/mo, 1 GB storage, 1 seat, 7 day retention.

Is Helicone HIPAA compliant?

Yes, available on Team plan and above Source

Do I need a credit card to try Helicone?

No, you can start without a credit card. Source

Does Helicone have a student or other discount?

Startups get 50% off first year (under 2 years old and $5M in funding), non profits get discounts based on org size, open source companies get a $100 credit for the first year, and free for most students and educators. Source

Does Helicone have an API?

Yes.

Works with

AI models
GPT 4o, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, Groq, Together AI, AWS Bedrock, Azure

Where this came from

Plans, prices and limits were copied from Helicone's own pages and the other sources listed, then checked .

How we collect prices and rank tools · Is something wrong? Correct this listing

Others that do the same job

All LLM observability & evals tools

Visit Helicone Helicone (opens the tool's site)