Overview
Langfuse (YC-backed OSS) ships trace + prompt management + evaluation as a stack. Helicone is an LLM gateway with built-in analytics and a much lighter footprint. We compare deployment, core capabilities, data ownership, pricing, and the use case each one fits.
TypeScript · NOASSERTION
Open-source LLM engineering platform providing tracing, evaluations, prompt management, and dataset management with integrations for LangChain, OpenAI, Anthropic, and more.
TypeScript · Apache-2.0
Open-source LLM observability platform with one-line integration, providing request logging, caching, rate limiting, cost tracking, and experimentation.
| Best for | Langfuse | Helicone |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment model | Self-host Docker / Kubernetes (Postgres + ClickHouse + Redis + Next.js) runs comfortably on a small VM. Hosted version has US / EU / HIPAA regions, billed by ingestion volume. | SaaS only, onboarding is "swap your base_url." No self-host option, which rules it out for strict data-residency requirements. |
| Core capabilities | Traces, prompt versioning, evaluation (LLM-as-judge plus heuristics), user feedback loops, session replay — full stack. SDKs cover Python, JS, and OpenTelemetry. | Request-level analytics (cost / latency / tokens sliced by user / model / prompt) plus full request bodies. Lightweight, but you will not find LLM-specific tools like prompt versioning. |
| Data ownership | Self-host keeps every byte in your own Postgres / ClickHouse. Hosted regions are US / EU and a DPA is available on contract. | Data lands in Helicone Postgres (US) by default. Enterprise tier signs a DPA but no self-host path exists, so sensitive data cannot stay on-prem. |
| Pricing | Hosted tiers are billed in 'units' (any trace, span, event, generation, or score counts as one unit). Hobby is free with 50k units/mo; Pro is $199/mo with 100k units and 3-year data retention. Overage is tiered starting at $8 per 100k units (roughly $0.08 per 1k). Self-host is fully free if you can run Postgres + ClickHouse + Redis/Valkey + S3 yourself. | 10k requests/month free (not per day). Pro is $79/mo with usage-based billing on top; per-1k overage rates are not published and require contacting sales. Simple, but no self-host path. |
| Best fit | Production LLM apps that need traces, prompt versioning, A/B evaluation; multiple prompt candidates running side by side; integration with internal eval pipelines. | Small teams that want "change the base_url and you are done" lightweight analytics; no appetite to operate Kubernetes; budget sensitive. |
| Metric | Langfuse | Helicone |
|---|---|---|
| Stars | 31.6k | 6.0k |
| Forks | 3.3k | 632 |
| Language | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| License | NOASSERTION | Apache-2.0 |
| Last commit | July 21, 2026 | July 21, 2026 |
Choose based on your primary workflow, language ecosystem, and integration needs. Review each project's documentation and recent GitHub activity before adopting it in production.
Helicone is faster to start — change your base_url and you are in, and the 10k requests/month free tier covers most MVPs. Langfuse ships the full trace / prompt / eval stack but takes longer to set up; the free 50k units covers a demo, but you get prompt versioning that Helicone simply does not have.
Self-hosted Langfuse. Helicone has no self-host path, so sensitive data must leave your network. Langfuse self-host keeps every byte in your VPC and can satisfy GDPR / HIPAA with a DPA and contractual controls.
Yes. A common pattern is Helicone as the LLM gateway (rate limiting, caching, cost attribution) and Langfuse for trace / eval / prompt management. They share data via an OpenTelemetry exporter feeding the same trace pipeline. You can also run Helicone as the proxy and let Langfuse ingest spans in proxy mode.
Langfuse. Helicone is request-level analytics and does not give you enough visibility into multi-agent session / chain / tool-call layers. Langfuse session replay plus step-by-step traces show the tool selection and reflection loops inside an agent.