Helicone vs Manifest

Helicone routes, debugs, and analyzes AI applications through a gateway and observability tools. The gateway provides access to more than 100 models through the OpenAI SDK by changing the model name, and supports load balancing, automatic failovers, and response caching across providers. Helicone logs requests in real time and visualizes multi-step LLM interactions to help locate error causes. Listed integrations include OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, LiteLLM, Anyscale, Together AI, and OpenRouter. It can run in customer infrastructure through single-click deployment or a production-ready Helm chart; Helicone also states that its cloud is SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant. A LangGraph integration tracks calls, sessions, performance, and costs, while an API cost calculator covers more than 300 models and providers. The free Hobby plan includes 10,000 requests, 1 GB storage, one seat, one organization, and seven days of retention. Pro costs $79.00 per month. A seven-day trial is advertised. Helicone says its services remain live in maintenance mode following acquisition by Mintlify, with security updates, new models, and bug and performance fixes continuing.

Manifest is an open-source LLM gateway for routing model requests, switching providers, repairing certain failures, and tracking inference spending. It provides one endpoint compatible with OpenAI and Anthropic models and subscriptions. When a provider goes down, fallback routing retries through another provider. Autofix repairs malformed requests and resends them when retries alone cannot resolve the error. Observability shows spending by harness, which models handled requests, and what failed. Manifest connects API keys, paid subscriptions, local models, and custom endpoints, including Ollama, llama.cpp, and LM Studio. The self-hosted gateway runs with Docker, works offline, requires no account, and supports amd64 and arm64. Self-hosted routing and request data remain on customer servers except documented telemetry and Autofix flows. The Cloud Free plan allows 10,000 routed requests per calendar month and cannot reach local models on the user's machine. Free includes unlimited self-hosted use; Pro costs $19 a month with unlimited Cloud requests and 365-day dashboard retention.