H 
Helicone
One-line LLM observability, caching and cost tracking via a proxy.
NOT REALLY
why this verdict
Keep it — OpenAI has not replaced it
OpenAI's version overlaps, but does not finish the analytics job, so this one is still worth keeping open.
- A named launch, not a vibe named, unlinked
- Providers added native usage dashboards and caching. OpenAI, February 1, 2025 — no announcement link recorded yet.
- How much of the job it covers not the job editorial call
- Parts of it. The job still needs the tool to get finished.
- Is there a free way to do it? yes
- 1 of 2 listed replacements have a usable free tier: Langfuse.
- What the call is worth nothing to cancel
- No paid entry tier tracked, so there is no subscription to cancel.
Reason composed from the fields above missing: announcement linked recorded: free replacement listed recorded: two or more escape hatches
- Threatened by
- OpenAI
- Since
- February 1, 2025
- List price
- free
- Per year
- —
The backstory
Helicone's trick is that integration costs you a changed base URL and nothing else, which is why it spread among small teams who wanted cost visibility without a rewrite. Provider dashboards show their own spend; Helicone shows spend per user, per feature, across all of them.
Escape hatches
L 
Langfuse Richer tracing and evals.
langfuse.com open_in_new L 
LangSmith Better for chain debugging.
smith.langchain.com open_in_new1 of 2 replacements have a usable free tier.