Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Helicone

Detailed side-by-side comparison to help you choose the right tool

Cloudflare AI Gateway

App Deployment

Cloudflare AI Gateway is a free AI observability and control layer that proxies requests to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and 25+ providers with caching, rate limiting, logging, DLP, and Guardrails.

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Starting Price

Free
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Helicone

🔴Developer

LLM Observability

Open-source LLM observability, gateway, and cost analytics platform — proxy your OpenAI, Anthropic, or Bedrock calls through Helicone and get traces, caching, retries, rate limiting, and cost tracking in one line of code.

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Starting Price

Free
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Feature Comparison

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FeatureCloudflare AI GatewayHelicone
CategoryApp DeploymentLLM Observability
Pricing Plans6 tiers4 tiers
Starting PriceFreeFree
Key Features
  • • LLM Request Routing
  • • Response Caching
  • • Rate Limiting
  • • Proxy-Based Request Logging
  • • Cost Analytics & Budget Alerts
  • • Gateway-Level Caching

💡 Our Take

Choose Cloudflare AI Gateway if you want an edge-deployed proxy with native fallback, DLP, and tight integration into Workers AI / Vectorize — and especially if you are already on Cloudflare. Choose Helicone if you want a more product-focused observability dashboard with richer prompt-management UI, custom properties, and a workflow geared toward LLM developers rather than infrastructure teams.

Cloudflare AI Gateway - Pros & Cons

Pros

  • ✓Core features are genuinely free on every Cloudflare account — analytics, caching, rate limiting, DLP, persistent logs
  • ✓One line of code change works with existing OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google SDKs across 25+ providers
  • ✓Runs on Cloudflare's edge so proxy latency overhead is single-digit milliseconds globally

Cons

  • ✗Log retention is capped per plan (100k Free / 10M per gateway Paid) — not unlimited
  • ✗Span-level observability and evals are thinner than Langfuse or Helicone
  • ✗Dynamic Routing, Spend Limits, and BYOK are still beta with documented rough edges

Helicone - Pros & Cons

Pros

  • ✓5-minute proxy integration captures full traces, cost, and latency across 20+ providers
  • ✓Real AI gateway features (caching, retries, fallback, key vault) replace a custom proxy
  • ✓MIT-licensed and self-hostable on Postgres + ClickHouse — passes regulated procurement

Cons

  • ✗Proxy mode adds a network hop unless self-hosted in your own region
  • ✗Prompt experiment UX is less mature than dedicated eval platforms like Braintrust
  • ✗Self-hosting requires running ClickHouse, which is an extra ops surface

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🔒 Security & Compliance Comparison

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Security FeatureCloudflare AI GatewayHelicone
SOC2✅ Yes✅ Yes
GDPR✅ Yes✅ Yes
HIPAA❌ No❌ No
SSO✅ Yes✅ Yes
Self-Hosted—✅ Yes
On-Prem❌ No✅ Yes
RBAC✅ Yes✅ Yes
Audit Log✅ Yes✅ Yes
Open Source❌ No✅ Yes
API Key Auth✅ Yes✅ Yes
Encryption at Rest✅ Yes✅ Yes
Encryption in Transit✅ Yes✅ Yes
Data ResidencyGLOBALUS, EU
Data Retentionconfigurableconfigurable
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Ready to Choose?

Read the full reviews to make an informed decision

Review Cloudflare AI GatewayReview Helicone