Lunary vs Helicone
Both are observability & tracing tools. Here is how they actually differ on price, billing model and deployment.
Lunary
A lightweight Apache-2.0 observability platform aimed at RAG pipelines and chatbots. The fastest path from nothing to basic tracing, with a free tier metered daily rather than monthly - which catches people out.
Helicone
An open-source, proxy-based LLM gateway and observability tool - now in maintenance mode after Mintlify acquired it in March 2026. Security and bug fixes only, no roadmap. Not a safe pick for new buyers.
| Lunary | Helicone | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Observability & Tracing | Observability & Tracing |
| Our rating | 3/5 | 2/5 |
| Starting price | Around $20-30/mo | $79/mo |
| Billing meter | event | request |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free self-hosting | Yes, free | No or paid tier only |
| Best for | Small teams shipping RAG pipelines or chatbots who want basic tracing working this afternoon, and who will either stay small or self-host before volume becomes expensive. | Almost nobody new - existing users who need a light open-source logging proxy and understand it's frozen. New buyers should look elsewhere. |
Our verdict on Lunary
Lunary is a good starter tool that knows what it is. It is optimised for RAG pipelines and chatbots rather than trying to be a complete AI engineering platform, it is Apache 2.0 and self-hostable, and it is among the fastest things in the category to get running. Radar - which buckets responses against criteria you define - is a genuinely useful idea for spotting patterns that individual traces hide. Two caveats matter. The free tier is 1,000 events per day rather than per month, which is a meaningfully tighter constraint than the headline suggests and will not survive a real chatbot for long. And published pricing is inconsistent across sources in a way we could not resolve, with figures ranging from around $20 to $200 a month depending on where you look. Against Langfuse it is lighter on nearly every axis, and Langfuse is the better default for most teams. Lunary earns its place when speed to first trace matters more than depth.
Full Lunary review →Our verdict on Helicone
Helicone was a clean, open-source, proxy-based observability tool - but Mintlify acquired it in March 2026 and put it in maintenance mode. Security patches, bug fixes and new-model support still ship, but there's no roadmap and Mintlify is actively helping customers migrate off. That makes it a dead end for new adopters, no matter how tidy the product is. We rate it low purely on that basis. If you're already on it, plan your exit. If you're evaluating it fresh, don't.
Full Helicone review →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main difference between Lunary and Helicone?
Lunary: Small teams shipping RAG pipelines or chatbots who want basic tracing working this afternoon, and who will either stay small or self-host before volume becomes expensive. Helicone: Almost nobody new - existing users who need a light open-source logging proxy and understand it's frozen. New buyers should look elsewhere. Both sit in Observability & Tracing, so the decision usually comes down to billing model and deployment rather than raw capability.
Which is cheaper, Lunary or Helicone?
It depends entirely on your workload shape, because they meter differently - Lunary bills on event and Helicone bills on request. Published starting prices are Around $20-30/mo and $79/mo respectively, but those numbers are not comparable until you apply them to the same traffic. Use our cost calculator to model both against your own request volume and span count.
Can I self-host Lunary or Helicone?
Lunary: Yes, free. Helicone: No or paid tier only. Free self-hosting means no licence fee, not no cost - you still own the infrastructure, upgrades and on-call.