Helicone vs Langfuse

Helicone

Evaluation

Langfuse

Evaluation

Tagline

Helicone

Open-source LLM observability — one-line proxy install.

Langfuse

Open-source LLM observability, prompt management, and evaluation in one platform.

Pricing

Helicone

Freemium· Free 100k req/mo; Pro from $25/mo

Langfuse

Freemium· Free self-host & Hobby tier; Core $29/mo, Pro $199/mo, Enterprise $2,499/mo

Free trial

Helicone

Not listed

Langfuse

Yes

API

Helicone

Not listed

Langfuse

Yes

Platforms

Helicone

api

Langfuse

api

Open source

Helicone

Not listed

Langfuse

Yes · NOASSERTION

GitHub stars

Helicone

—

Langfuse

35,207

checked 2026-09-29

Last GitHub push

Helicone

—

Langfuse

2026-09-29

First commit

Helicone

—

Langfuse

2023-05

Model used

Helicone

Platform (any LLM)

Langfuse

Model-agnostic

Best for

Helicone

Pick Helicone when you want one-line LLM observability with no integration work.

Langfuse

Pick Langfuse if you want production-grade LLM tracing, prompt versioning, and evals in one open-source tool you can self-host.

Not for

Helicone

Skip it when you need deep eval datasets or your workload can't tolerate a proxy hop.

Langfuse

Skip it if you just need a no-code prompt playground or you're not yet running LLM calls in production worth instrumenting.

Editorial score

Helicone

8.3 / 10

Langfuse

7.3 / 10

Use cases

Helicone

observabilitycost trackingopen source

Langfuse

llm-observabilityprompt-managementllm-evaluationagent-tracingrag-debugging

Pros

Helicone

• One-line install
• Open source
• Generous free tier
• Cost tracking is genuinely useful

Langfuse

• Fully open source and self-hostable at no cost
• Tracing, prompts, and evals in one platform instead of three
• Built on OpenTelemetry with SDKs for Python and JS
• Integrates with OpenAI SDK, LangChain, LlamaIndex, and 100+ libraries
• Generous free Hobby tier with no credit card required

Cons

Helicone

• Eval features less deep than Braintrust
• Proxy adds a hop

Langfuse

• Cloud pricing by 'units' is opaque until you instrument and measure
• Self-hosting Postgres + ClickHouse stack is non-trivial to operate
• Pro/Enterprise jump ($29 to $199 to $2,499) leaves a gap for mid-size teams

Website

Helicone

www.helicone.ai

Langfuse

langfuse.com

Editorial score: rule-based, 0–10, from AI-assisted profile inputs (see /methodology) — not a user rating; “—” means unscored. “Not listed” means we have no record of it, not that it is absent. GitHub figures and prices carry the date they were checked or captured; prices are shown as published, unconverted.