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Helicone
AI gateway and LLM observability platform for routing, debugging, and analyzing production LLM applications.
Mintlify announced on March 3, 2026 that it was acquiring Helicone and that the product would continue in maintenance mode, with security updates, bug fixes and new models. Helicone’s site now says it is no longer part of Mintlify, with details to come. Neither company has said who runs Helicone now or whether maintenance mode has ended, sign-ups are disabled, and the open-source repository was still receiving commits on October 28, 2026. Mintlify’s announcement. Helicone’s site. Helicone on GitHub.
Startups and product teams shipping LLM features that need gateway routing, tracing, and prompt debugging with a low starting price.
Enterprises that already standardized on a different observability stack and only need offline eval notebooks. New adopters, since sign-ups are disabled and the product’s owner is unclear.
Verdict
Helicone is an AI gateway and LLM observability company that helps teams route, debug, and analyze LLM application traffic. It publishes transparent usage-based pricing with a free Hobby tier and paid Pro and Team plans, and Mintlify announced in March 2026 that it was acquiring it and moving the product to maintenance mode. Helicone’s site now says it is no longer part of Mintlify. It matters because production LLM apps need request-level visibility and routing controls, and Helicone built that layer for builders who do not want to run their own proxy.
Score Breakdown
How Helicone scores in the categories that matter to its buyers.
Pricing
Helicone publishes Hobby (free), Pro ($79/month), and Team ($799/month) plans, with usage-based metering called out on Pro.
| Plan | Price | What stands out |
|---|---|---|
| Hobby | $0 | 10,000 free requests, 1 GB storage, 1 seat |
| Pro | $79 / month | Unlimited seats, alerts and reports, HQL; usage-based pricing applies |
| Team | $799 / month | Everything in Pro plus higher team limits |
The Field at a Glance
How Helicone compares with other Prompt & app frameworks vendors we reviewed, by Overall Score and relative typical engagement cost.
Helicone scores 7.4 in Prompt & app frameworks, under LiteLLM (8.0) and Portkey (7.9), and ahead of PromptLayer (6.9). Relative cost lands lower for this subcategory.
Use-case matrix
| Use case | Fit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Production LLM tracing | Strong | Sessions, users, and request analytics are core. |
| Gateway routing | Strong | AI Gateway is a headline product. |
| Transparent starter pricing | Strong | Hobby free and Pro list prices are public. |
| Heavy offline eval platforms | Mixed | Observability-first; eval depth varies by stack. |
| Air-gapped only deployments | Weak | Cloud-first SaaS motion. |
| Non-LLM app monitoring | Weak | Built for LLM traffic. |
Review Excerpts
Excerpts from company testimonials, customer stories and product pages for Helicone. Paid reviews and pay-for-play sites were excluded.
Helicone markets itself as an AI gateway and LLM observability platform used to route, debug, and analyze applications, with integrations for OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, LiteLLM, and others.
Published pricing starts with a free Hobby plan (10,000 requests), Pro at $79 per month, and Team at $799 per month, so teams can size cost before a sales call.
Helicone’s owner and roadmap are unsettled after its split from Mintlify, so buyers should confirm support continuity with Helicone.
Company Facts
- Founded
- 2022 (CB Insights)
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California, United States (CB Insights)
- Employees
- About 5 (Y Combinator)
- Total funding raised
- $2M (CB Insights)
- Key investors
- Coughdrop Capital, Y Combinator, Realm Capital Ventures (CB Insights)
- Accelerator
- Y Combinator, Winter 2023 batch (Y Combinator)
- Status
- Acquisition by Mintlify announced March 2026; Helicone’s site now says it is no longer part of Mintlify (Mintlify)
- Website
- helicone.ai
Key Leadership
Justin Torre
Founder and CEO
Methodology
This page is an independent evaluation of Helicone for buyers comparing options in prompt & app frameworks. AI Industry Reviews accepts no sponsorships, advertising, or pay-for-placement fees. Helicone did not pay for this review.
What we scored
The headline number is an Overall Score on a 0-10 scale. Eight criteria sit under it in two groups.
- Buyer outcomes (for prompt & app frameworks)
- LLM gateway and routing
- Tracing and debugging
- Pricing clarity
- Deep offline eval suites
- Company & commercial
- Innovation & product leadership
- Project management & communication
- Pricing
- Contract fairness
Pricing measures whether the price looks fair for the value delivered, including packaging and renewal friction that show up in real buying cycles.
Score Composition
| Input | Weight | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Reviews | 40% | A proprietary read of what practitioners say about likes, complaints, and day-to-day use, including public review sites, forums, and private chat rooms. Paid reviews and pay-for-play sites are out of scope. |
| Product | 35% | Hands-on look at screens and workflows. |
| Pricing | 15% | Whether the price looks fair for what you get. |
| Docs & training | 10% | Docs, tutorials, and training material. |
How we balanced the evidence
The Overall Score is the simple average of the eight criteria. Recommendation language follows that score and the use-case matrix above.
Scope
Helicone is graded here as prompt & app frameworks. Criteria scores can move as more review volume and product checks are added.