Honest pros, cons, and verdict on this llm observability tool
✅ 5-minute proxy integration captures full traces, cost, and latency across 20+ providers
Starting Price
Free
Free Tier
Yes
Category
LLM Observability
Skill Level
Developer
Open-source LLM observability and AI gateway — logs every prompt, response, cost, and latency across 20+ providers with a one-line proxy or async SDK, plus caching, retries, and prompt experiments.
Helicone is an open-source LLM observability platform aimed at production AI apps. It works as either a proxy gateway (you swap your OpenAI/Anthropic base URL for Helicone's and instantly get logs, costs, latency, caching, retries, and prompt versioning) or an async SDK that ships logs without sitting in the request path. The hosted dashboard gives you per-request traces, token-level cost attribution by user, session, and feature, and tools for prompt experiments and offline evaluations. Helicone supports 20+ providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, Together, Groq, OpenRouter, AWS Bedrock, and Azure OpenAI, plus a unified billing view across them.
per month
per month
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Learn more →Helicone delivers on its promises as a llm observability tool. While it has some limitations, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for most users in its target market.
Open-source LLM observability and AI gateway — logs every prompt, response, cost, and latency across 20+ providers with a one-line proxy or async SDK, plus caching, retries, and prompt experiments.
Yes, Helicone is good for llm observability work. Users particularly appreciate 5-minute proxy integration captures full traces, cost, and latency across 20+ providers. However, keep in mind proxy mode adds a network hop unless self-hosted in your own region.
Yes, Helicone offers a free tier. However, premium features unlock additional functionality for professional users.
Helicone is best for Production LLM apps that need cost and latency visibility from day one and Multi-provider stacks that want one unified log and gateway. It's particularly useful for llm observability professionals who need proxy-based request logging.
Popular Helicone alternatives include Langfuse, LangSmith, Braintrust. Each has different strengths, so compare features and pricing to find the best fit.
Last verified March 2026