FutureStack LogoFutureStack
HomeDiscoverBlogNewsletter
Subscribe
FutureStack LogoFutureStack

Community-driven AI tools discovery. Built for students, builders, and founders to find what actually works.

01 // Discover

  • All Tools
  • Free Tools
  • Developer API
  • Submit a Tool

02 // Trending

03 // Blogs

  • View all blogs

04 // Categories

  • AI Writing
  • Video Tools
  • Coding & Dev
  • Image Generation
  • Marketing AI
  • View all 12

05 // By Role

  • For Developers
  • For Founders
  • For Marketers
  • For Designers
  • For Students
  • View all roles

06 // Company

  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Newsletter
  • Help Center
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
FEATURED & VERIFIED ON:
FutureStack - Featured on Startup FameFeatured on Launch LlamaFeatured on ShipBoostPowered by Startup Fast
© 2026 FutureStack. Built for the AI frontier.
Systems Operational · v2.4
Helicone

Helicone

Open-source AI gateway and observability platform for LLM applications.

Visit Website
At a Glance
Website
helicone.ai
Category
Developer Tools
Ideal For
Developer, Founder
Platforms
Web, API
Added
July 14, 2026
Pricing
Freemium
Last Verified
September 2, 2026
Helicone screenshot

What is Helicone?

TL;DR

Helicone is an open-source AI gateway and observability platform for routing, monitoring, debugging, and analyzing LLM requests, usage, latency, costs, errors, and production AI behavior across providers.

  • AI gateway for routing and monitoring LLM requests
  • Tracks latency, cost, usage, and errors
  • Prompt debugging and production analytics

Explore with AI

ChatGPTClaudePerplexityGemini

About

Helicone is an open-source AI gateway and LLM observability platform for developers building AI applications. It helps teams route, monitor, debug, and analyze model requests across providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, LiteLLM, and other AI infrastructure tools. The platform is useful for production AI products because it gives visibility into the behavior and cost of LLM calls. Developers can track latency, usage, token spend, errors, request metadata, and user-level patterns instead of treating model calls as a black box. This is especially important for SaaS founders and technical teams shipping AI features where cost and reliability can quickly become difficult to manage. Helicone can act as a gateway layer between an application and model providers. That makes it useful for logging, rate limiting, debugging prompts, comparing providers, improving reliability, and understanding which users or workflows generate the most AI spend. Teams can use it during prototyping and continue using it as an observability layer after launch. For FutureStack, Helicone is a strong fit for developers and founders building AI apps with real users. It is best positioned as a practical infrastructure tool for LLM monitoring, cost control, and debugging. It helps builders understand what is happening inside their AI systems before small issues become expensive production problems.

Use Cases

LLM Observability

Track model requests, latency, tokens, spend, errors, and metadata across production AI applications.

AI Gateway

Route requests through a gateway layer that adds logging, provider controls, and operational visibility.

Cost Monitoring

Understand which users, workflows, models, and applications generate the most AI spend.

Prompt Debugging

Inspect requests and responses to diagnose unexpected outputs and improve AI application behavior.

Key Features

  • AI gateway for routing and monitoring LLM requests
  • Tracks latency, cost, usage, and errors
  • Prompt debugging and production analytics
  • Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, LiteLLM, and more

Featured Tools

Wispr Flow logo
Wispr Flow
Voice-First Dictation
Chatbase logo
Chatbase
Custom AI Chatbots
beehiiv logo
beehiiv
Newsletter Platform

We may earn commissions from links to support our work. Learn more.

Explore with AI

ChatGPTClaudePerplexityGemini

Pricing summary

Free Hobby plan available. Paid plans include Pro and Team, with enterprise pricing for larger organizations.

Pricing & Plans

Hobby

Free AI observability for small projects and early LLM apps.

Free
  • Basic LLM observability
  • Request logging and analytics
  • Cost and latency tracking
  • Good for early projects
Popular

Pro

Production-ready AI gateway and observability for builders.

$79/month
  • Advanced AI gateway features
  • Better usage analytics
  • Prompt and request debugging
  • Production monitoring workflows

Team

Team plan for larger AI products and engineering workflows.

$799/month
  • Team collaboration
  • Higher observability scale
  • Advanced monitoring controls
  • Built for larger AI teams

Other pricing notes

  • Hobby plan is free for small projects.
  • Enterprise plan excluded from FutureStack's three-plan limit.
Pricing last checked: July 2026Official pricing

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Combines AI gateway and observability in one layer
  • Useful for tracking cost, latency, usage, and errors
  • Supports multiple model providers and routing workflows
  • Open-source option provides additional control
  • Good fit for production AI applications and agents

Cons

  • Adds another infrastructure layer between apps and models
  • Advanced production governance can require setup
  • Usage-based AI costs remain separate
  • Observability still requires meaningful metrics and review
  • May be unnecessary for very small AI prototypes

The Best Helicone Alternatives

The best Helicone alternatives are Langfuse, Braintrust, and Portkey.

Langfuse

Langfuse

Freemium

Developer Tools

Choose Langfuse if...

  • ✓you want open source observability for LLM applications and agents
  • ✓you value tracing prompts, model calls, tools, costs, and user feedback
  • ✓you prefer good fit for teams that want visibility into production AI behavior
See details ↓
Braintrust

Braintrust

Freemium

Developer Tools

Choose Braintrust if...

  • ✓you want strong platform for evaluating and debugging AI applications
  • ✓you value prompt experiments, evals, datasets, logs, and production monitoring
  • ✓you prefer helps teams measure quality instead of guessing from manual tests
See details ↓
Portkey

Portkey

Freemium

Developer Tools

Choose Portkey if...

  • ✓you want provides an AI gateway for routing, reliability, observability, and governance
  • ✓you value teams working with multiple LLM providers
  • ✓you prefer can add retries, fallbacks, caching, logs, and access controls around model calls
See details ↓

Frequently Asked Questions

Reviews

Honest feedback from the FutureStack community.

0.0
0 ratings

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your experience.

Featured Tools

Wispr Flow logo
Wispr Flow
Voice-First Dictation
Chatbase logo
Chatbase
Custom AI Chatbots
beehiiv logo
beehiiv
Newsletter Platform

We may earn commissions from links to support our work. Learn more.

Explore with AI

ChatGPTClaudePerplexityGemini

Trending Tools on FutureStack

Discover the most popular and hand-picked AI tools across FutureStack

CommandCode
CommandCode

CommandCode

Paid

Coding

Choose CommandCode if...

  • ✓you prefer developers who prefer terminal workflows
  • ✓you need learns repeated coding preferences over time
  • ✓you prefer supports skills, memory, MCP, plugins, and commands
See details ↓
SambaNova Cloud
SambaNova Cloud

SambaNova Cloud

Freemium

Developer Tools

Choose SambaNova Cloud if...

  • ✓you want strong open-model selection
  • ✓you need usage-based pricing by model and token
  • ✓you prefer designed for production inference workloads
See details ↓
Google Flow
Google Flow

Google Flow

Freemium

Video Generation

Choose Google Flow if...

  • ✓you want strong filmmaking-oriented workflow
  • ✓you need uses multiple Google generative models
  • ✓you prefer supports reference-driven consistency
See details ↓
Amp
Amp

Amp

Paid

Coding

Choose Amp if...

  • ✓you want strong for complex multi-step engineering work
  • ✓you need remote agents can continue without your laptop
  • ✓you prefer specialist agents enable parallel workflows
See details ↓
IBM Bob
IBM Bob

IBM Bob

Paid

Coding

Choose IBM Bob if...

  • ✓you prefer enterprise software development
  • ✓you need supports agents and parallel development work
  • ✓you prefer works across IDE, CLI, and CI/CD workflows
See details ↓
Humanloop
Humanloop

Humanloop

Free Trial

Developer Tools

Choose Humanloop if...

  • ✓you want combines prompt management, evals, and observability
  • ✓you need supports both UI-first and code-first workflows
  • ✓you prefer human and automated evaluation options
See details ↓
LiteAi.me
LiteAi.me

LiteAi.me

Freemium

Developer Tools

Choose LiteAi.me if...

  • ✓you want very low setup barrier for beginners
  • ✓you value students and classroom projects
  • ✓you prefer combines web publishing and Android packaging
See details ↓
Scribe
Scribe

Scribe

Freemium

Productivity

Choose Scribe if...

  • ✓you want turns real workflows into documentation much faster than writing guides manually
  • ✓you prefer SOPs, onboarding, training, customer education, and client handoffs
  • ✓you prefer supports web, desktop, and mobile process capture on paid plans
See details ↓
Cursor
Cursor

Cursor

Freemium

Coding

Choose Cursor if...

  • ✓you want combines editing, chat, autocomplete, and agents
  • ✓you need strong project-context awareness
  • ✓you value founders shipping quickly
See details ↓
OpenWork
OpenWork

OpenWork

Freemium

Developer Tools

Choose OpenWork if...

  • ✓you want open source and local-first
  • ✓you need supports many model providers
  • ✓you prefer useful beyond coding and chat
See details ↓
Helicone

Helicone

Developer Tools

Visit