Helicone alternatives: where to go now it is in maintenance mode

Helicone still works, but it is no longer a product to build a long-term plan around. Mintlify acquired it on March 3, 2026, and both companies say Helicone's services will stay live in maintenance mode, with security updates, new models and bug fixes continuing. Mintlify adds that it will work with every customer on a smooth migration to another platform. There is no announced shutdown date. Helicone's announcement, Mintlify's announcement

So you have time to choose carefully. Start by naming what Helicone does for you today. For some teams it is a gateway: requests go through Helicone's URL, which handles routing, caching and fallbacks while logging every call. For others it is mainly a dashboard of costs and latency. A few rely on its prompts, datasets and scores. Those are different replacements. If prompt versioning is the part you need to replace, our PromptLayer alternatives guide covers that choice.

Portkey and Langfuse, the two alternatives this guide covers most closely, have also changed owners in 2026. ClickHouse acquired Langfuse on January 16, and Palo Alto Networks closed its acquisition of Portkey on May 29. An acquisition alone is not a reason to rule a tool out, but the owner's stated plans belong in your comparison. This guide is based on vendor documentation and pricing pages checked on September 24, 2026. We did not set up accounts or send traffic through these tools.

Choose by the part of Helicone you rely on

Staying on Helicone for now is a real option

Helicone's pricing page, as of September 24, 2026, lists a free Hobby plan with 10,000 requests a month and 7-day retention, Pro at $79 per month and Team at $799 per month. Both paid plans add usage-based charges beyond the included requests and storage, with one month and three months of retention respectively. Helicone pricing

The open-source repository is Apache-2.0 licensed and was still receiving security fixes in September 2026. That fits the maintenance promise. Neither announcement commits to new features beyond new models.

Whatever you decide, get your history out on your own schedule. Helicone documents an export CLI, @helicone/export, that writes JSONL or CSV and can include request and response bodies, plus a REST API for the same data. Helicone data export

Helicone vs Portkey: the closest like-for-like gateway

If your application talks to Helicone's gateway URL, Portkey is the most direct comparison. Its documentation lists conditional routing, fallbacks between providers, automatic retries, load balancing, simple and semantic caching, budget and rate limits, and guardrails, all behind a universal API. Portkey AI gateway

As of September 24, 2026, Portkey's pricing page lists a free Developer plan with 10,000 recorded logs a month and 3-day log retention. Production costs $49 per month with 100,000 recorded logs, $9 for each additional 100,000 requests and 30-day log retention. Enterprise pricing is custom. On the free plan, requests beyond the limit still go through; they just aren't logged. Portkey pricing

The ownership question needs a direct answer from Portkey. Palo Alto Networks says it will continue to support existing and new Portkey customers, and Portkey will be the AI gateway for Prisma AIRS, its AI security platform. Portkey's own site now says it is Prisma AIRS AI Gateway. Palo Alto Networks announcement

That direction may suit an enterprise buying security controls. A small team replacing a developer dashboard should ask how the self-serve plans will evolve. If you plan to self-host Portkey's MIT-licensed gateway, note that at our check its GitHub repository was last updated on May 25, 2026, and its latest release was from January. Portkey gateway repository

Langfuse vs Helicone: tracing instead of a proxy

Langfuse answers a different question. Helicone sees every request because the request passes through it. Langfuse is usually added through its SDKs or OpenTelemetry, which lets it record a whole agent run, including steps that never call a model. If you still want proxy-style logging, its pricing page lists LiteLLM as the route. Langfuse OpenTelemetry

As of September 24, 2026, Langfuse Cloud's Hobby plan is free with 50,000 units a month, 30 days of data access and two users. Core is $29 per month and Pro is $199 per month, each including 100,000 units, then $8 per additional 100,000 up to one million, with lower rates above that. Core keeps 90 days of data and Pro three years. Langfuse pricing

Units are the thing to model. Langfuse counts each trace, observation and score as a unit, including scores created by its own LLM-as-a-judge evaluations. A request that Helicone logged once can become several units when it is traced as an agent with multiple steps. Estimate from one real workflow before comparing plans. Langfuse billable units

Self-hosting is free of usage billing: the code outside its enterprise directories is MIT-licensed. The work is real, though. A production deployment runs Postgres, ClickHouse, Redis or Valkey and object storage, and the Docker Compose route is documented as a single machine without high availability or backups. Langfuse self-hosting

On ownership, Langfuse says there are no planned licensing changes and that Langfuse Cloud continues as before under ClickHouse. Langfuse joins ClickHouse

Two lighter routes: LiteLLM and Cloudflare AI Gateway

If you want a gateway under your own control, LiteLLM's proxy gives you an OpenAI-compatible endpoint for many providers, spend tracking and budgets per virtual key or user, rate limits, fallbacks and logging to external tools. Its core is MIT-licensed, with a separate license for its enterprise directory. You operate it, and you still need somewhere to send the logs. Langfuse documents that pairing. LiteLLM proxy, Langfuse with LiteLLM

If Helicone was mainly your cost and latency dashboard, look at Cloudflare AI Gateway. Like Helicone, it sits between your application and the provider, and Cloudflare says getting started takes one line of code. Its core features (dashboard analytics, caching and rate limiting) are free. Log pricing depends on when you created your first gateway: accounts starting on or after September 24, 2026 follow Workers Logs pricing, while earlier ones keep legacy storage limits. Cloudflare AI Gateway pricing

When the real gap is evaluation

Some teams leave Helicone because they need structured experiments, not better logs. Then the comparison shifts to evaluation platforms. LangSmith works with many frameworks besides LangChain and bills per seat plus traces, with 14-day retention on base traces. Braintrust bills by processed data and scores. LangSmith observability, LangSmith pricing, Braintrust pricing

Move in stages, not in one cutover

• Export the Helicone history you need before changing anything, and decide how far back you really need it.
• List the Helicone headers your code sends, such as Helicone-Property-* custom properties, and map each one to the new tool's metadata.
• Put the gateway URL or tracing setup behind configuration, so you can switch back quickly.
• Run old and new side by side for a period, then compare request counts and cost totals. When cost is not sent with the data, a tool estimates it from its own model price definitions, as Langfuse documents, so small differences need explaining, not ignoring.
• Check what each tool stores from prompts and responses, who can see it and how long it stays.

Choose the tool that covers the part of Helicone you actually depend on. If that is the gateway, compare Portkey and LiteLLM. If it is the traces and costs behind your agents, start with Langfuse.