Helicone
Verified Oct 29, 2026 ActiveOpen-source LLM observability and AI gateway that logs every request, tracks cost and latency, caches and fails over between providers.
Listed on EffectHub ·
Pricing
- Pricing model
- Freemium
- Paid options from
- $79/mo
- Billing
- Monthly
Hobby is free with 10,000 requests, 1 GB storage, one seat and 7-day retention. Pro is $79 a month with unlimited seats and Team $799 a month, both with a 7-day trial and usage-based charges for requests and storage above the included 10K requests and 1 GB; Enterprise is quoted.
Use tool ↗About Helicone
Helicone sits between an application and its model providers, either as a proxy you point your base URL at or through its AI gateway, and records every request with cost, latency, tokens, user and session. The dashboard groups traffic into sessions for agent runs, lets you query logs with its own HQL language, set alerts and reports, and manage prompts, datasets, scores and a playground for testing changes. The gateway adds caching, rate limits and automatic fallbacks across OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, Bedrock, Vertex and other providers. The code is Apache-2.0 on GitHub and can be self-hosted. Mintlify bought Helicone in March 2026 and put it in maintenance mode; the site now says Helicone is no longer part of Mintlify, with details still to come.
- Platforms
- Web · API
- API
- Yes
- Last verified
- Oct 29, 2026
Verified sources
- Hobby free (10,000 requests, 1 GB), Pro $79/month, Team $799/month, Enterprise custom; usage-based pricing and retention limitshelicone.ai ↗
- Mintlify acquired Helicone; Helicone to continue in maintenance mode with security updates, bug fixes and new models, with migration supportmintlify.com ↗
- Banner: Helicone is no longer part of Mintlify; Helicone, Inc. copyright; AI gateway and observability featureshelicone.ai ↗
- Apache-2.0 repository created January 2023, still receiving commitsgithub.com ↗
Is Helicone legit?
We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.
- TLS certificate
- Issued by Google Trust Services, valid until Jan 1, 2027Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 29, 2026
- Last checked
- Oct 29, 2026The site answered
- On the market since
- 2023The vendor's own material, read by us
- Operated by
- Helicone, Inc., United StatesOur research, card verified Oct 29, 2026
Pros & cons of Helicone
Helicone is a quick way to get request logs, cost tracking and caching on top of LLM calls with a one-line base-URL change, and the open-source code means you can run it yourself. Its ownership has changed twice in 2026 and the public changelog has been quiet since late 2025, so teams choosing a long-term observability platform should weigh that against more actively developed options.
Pros
- Proxy or gateway integration takes one line of configuration
- Free tier with 10,000 requests a month and an open-source self-host option
- Built-in caching, rate limits and automatic provider fallbacks
- Session view for multi-step agent traces and HQL for custom queries
Cons
- Free plan keeps data for only 7 days and Pro for one month
- Usage-based charges on top of the plan fee make bills harder to predict
- Ownership uncertainty: acquired by Mintlify in March 2026, then announced as separated again with no details
Best for
- Developers who want cost, latency and usage logs for LLM calls with minimal code changes
- Teams that need a gateway with caching and provider fallback alongside logging
- Companies that prefer an Apache-2.0 tool they can self-host
Not for
- Teams that need deep evaluation and experiment tracking as the main workflow
- Buyers who need a clear long-term product roadmap and vendor ownership
Watch out: Mintlify acquired Helicone in March 2026 and said it would run in maintenance mode with security fixes and new models while helping customers migrate; the site now states Helicone is no longer part of Mintlify. Check the current status and roadmap before committing production traffic.
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