Helicone — LLM Gateways Platform
LLM GatewaysLayer 1FreemiumWhat is Helicone?
Helicone is an open-source LLM observability platform providing monitoring, logging, and analytics for AI applications. The platform offers detailed insights into LLM requests, costs, latency, and user behavior with minimal integration overhead—just one line of code to get started. Helicone supports all major LLM providers and provides features like caching, rate limiting, prompt management, and user tracking. The platform is available as both open-source for self-hosting and as a managed cloud service with generous free tiers. Helicone helps teams understand and optimize their AI applications through comprehensive observability.
Key Features
- ✓LLM observability and monitoring
- ✓Cost tracking and analytics
- ✓Request caching
- ✓Rate limiting and user management
- ✓Open-source with managed option
Pros & Cons
Pros
- +Extremely simple integration (one line of code)
- +Open-source with self-hosting option
- +Generous free tier (100k requests)
- +Supports all major LLM providers
Cons
- -Advanced features require paid tiers
- -Data retention limited on free tier
- -Self-hosting requires technical expertise
Helicone Pricing
Free trial available
- ✓100k requests/month
- ✓Basic observability
- ✓1-month retention
- ✓Community support
- ✓1M requests/month
- ✓6-month retention
- ✓Advanced features
- ✓Email support
- ✓Unlimited requests
- ✓Custom retention
- ✓SOC 2 compliance
- ✓Dedicated support
- ✓Self-hosted option
Common Use Cases
Developer teams who need visibility into their LLM usage, costs, and performance
- •LLM cost monitoring and optimization
- •Production request debugging
- •User-level usage tracking and rate limiting
- •Caching to reduce latency and cost
- •Team-wide LLM spend management
Using Helicone with Respan
Integrate Helicone's observability platform with Respan to monitor and optimize AI applications. Add comprehensive logging and analytics with minimal code. Combine Helicone's insights with Respan's orchestration for data-driven AI operations.
- ✓One-line integration for instant observability
- ✓Monitor costs, latency, and usage across all LLMs
- ✓Open-source option for self-hosting
- ✓Generous free tier with 100k requests/month
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Last verified: March 10, 2026