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AlternativesBest Helicone Alternatives in 2026
Looking for a Helicone alternative? Here are the strongest options, what each one costs, and how to switch without breaking production.
For a lower LLM bill, apicuts guarantees at least 20% lower all-in cost after its 10% fee, live in one day. For other needs, look at Portkey or Cloudflare AI Gateway.
Mintlify acquired Helicone in March 2026, and Helicone moved to maintenance mode: fixes and new-model support, but no new features (report). Helicone's pricing page now says it is no longer part of Mintlify, with details to come.
Why teams look for a Helicone alternative
- It's in maintenance mode, so no new features are coming.
- You want to cut the spend you're observing, not just see it.
- You need a migration path that doesn't break production.
Helicone is a good fit for teams that need detailed logging and analytics. Here's what else is worth a look.
The best Helicone alternatives
A done-for-you LLM API gateway: we switch on caching, routing, batching, and prompt and output fixes for you.
Price: 10% of verified savings, no retainer. If your all-in bill isn't at least 20% lower after our fee, you pay nothing.
Setup: A 15-minute teardown, then live in one day with one line of code.
An AI gateway built for observability, guardrails and governance.
Price: A free Developer tier (10K recorded logs a month), Production from $49 a month (100K logs), and custom Enterprise pricing. The open-source gateway can be self-hosted.
A gateway for analytics, logging, caching, rate limiting, retries and model fallbacks.
Price: Core features are free. Credits bought through Unified Billing carry a 5% fee, and provider rates are passed through without markup.
An open-source LLM proxy and SDK that you host yourself.
Price: Free to self-host under the MIT license. An enterprise tier with SSO, audit logs and custom SLAs is priced on request.
One API for many models, built into Vercel.
Price: Provider list price with no markup and no platform fee on tokens, including with your own keys. Some optional features, such as custom reporting and team-wide zero data retention, cost extra.
A model marketplace and router: one API key for 600+ models.
Price: Provider list prices with no markup, plus a 5.5% platform fee on credit purchases on its Standard plan. Bring-your-own-key usage is free up to $25,000 of list-price inference a month, then 5%.
How to choose
- Want the bill to fall? Pick the option that guarantees savings after its own fee.
- Want full control? Self-host an open-source proxy, and budget the engineering time.
- Want governance and logs? Pick a gateway built for observability.
- Want list-price access to many models? Pick a no-markup gateway.
How to migrate off Helicone
- List the models, keys and routing rules you use today.
- Point one non-critical service at the new endpoint. Most gateways, including apicuts, use the OpenAI API format, so it's a base URL and key change.
- Run both side by side and compare cost per successful request, latency and errors.
- Move the rest of your traffic once the numbers hold, and keep the old endpoint as a one-line rollback.
See the full migration guide.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Helicone alternative?
It depends on why you're switching. For a lower bill, apicuts guarantees at least 20% lower all-in cost after its fee. For other needs, Portkey and Cloudflare AI Gateway are strong options.
How long does it take to switch from Helicone?
With an OpenAI-compatible gateway, usually a day: change the base URL and key on one service, compare results, then move the rest.
How much does Helicone cost?
A free Hobby tier (10,000 requests), Pro at $79 a month, Team at $799 a month, usage-based charges on top, and custom Enterprise pricing.
Sources: Helicone's pricing page, Portkey's pricing page, Cloudflare AI Gateway's pricing page, LiteLLM's pricing page, Vercel AI Gateway's pricing page, OpenRouter's pricing page. Checked October 30, 2026.
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