Helicone Alternatives
Helicone is in maintenance mode following the Mintlify acquisition - security fixes only, no roadmap.
If you are still running it, treat migration as scheduled work rather than a backlog item.
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Teams that want an open-source observability platform they can self-host without losing features
From $29/mo Bills events Self-hosts free - 2
Teams that want a genuinely feature-complete open-source observability platform, or the cheapest managed cloud, without a license or feature-gate catch
From $19/mo Bills spans Self-hosts free - 3
Teams that want one observability tool for their whole application rather than an LLM-specific silo, are comfortable on OpenTelemetry, and care about predictable, genuinely low cost. Especially strong for Python shops already using Pydantic or Pydantic AI.
From $49/mo Bills records - 4
Teams that outgrew self-hosted Phoenix and want the managed version without operating it, mixed ML and GenAI shops that need computer vision and model observability in the same platform, and regulated teams needing HIPAA.
From $50/mo Bills spans - 5
Teams that want fast, framework-agnostic OSS tracing and strong RAG eval, and who are not reselling Phoenix as a hosted service
From $0 Self-hosts free - 6
Enterprise GenAI teams that have been burned by production hallucinations and want research-grade eval metrics plus guardrails, and can run a sales process
From $100/mo Bills spans - 7
Teams running agent-heavy production workloads who want tracing, online evaluation, annotation and experiments in one agent-focused system, and who are comfortable with an enterprise sales process rather than self-serve pricing.
From Custom (contact sales) Bills events - 8
Teams building AI agents - especially browser agents - who want OpenTelemetry-native tracing they can self-host completely and don't mind an unusual billing model
From $30/mo Bills spans Self-hosts free
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do people look for Helicone alternatives?
Helicone is in maintenance mode following the Mintlify acquisition - security fixes only, no roadmap. That is the main reason this search exists, and it makes migration a requirement rather than a preference.
What is the closest free alternative to Helicone?
Langfuse is the strongest option that self-hosts free - Teams that want an open-source observability platform they can self-host without losing features Free on licence is not free to operate though; you still own the infrastructure and the on-call.
How should I compare the costs?
Not by their published prices, because tools in this category meter different things - spans, events, GB ingested, seats, prompts, or a percentage of provider spend. A $50 plan means something completely different in each case. Model your own request volume and span count through the cost calculator instead.