Helicone vs OpenZiti LLM Gateway
Helicone
helicone.aiOpenZiti LLM Gateway
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Helicone | OpenZiti LLM Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $79/mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 0 |
| Spec score · LLM Gateway Software | 8.3 (#9) | 7.4 (#28) |
| Spec score · LLM gateways | 8.3 (#12) | 7.1 (#27) |
| Observability | Helicone visualizes multi-step LLM interactions, logs requests in real time, and helps identify error root causes. | When enabled, Prometheus-exported metrics include request counts, latency, token counts, routing decisions, provider errors, and endpoint health. |
| Purpose | Helicone routes, debugs, and analyzes AI applications. | It is an OpenAI-compatible API proxy that routes requests to OpenAI, Anthropic, and compatible backends such as Ollama and vLLM. |
| Routing | The platform provides smart load balancing, automatic failovers, and response caching across providers. | Optional semantic routing uses keyword heuristics, embedding similarity, and an LLM classifier to choose a model when the request omits one. |
Plans
In their own words
Helicone
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.
OpenZiti LLM Gateway
OpenZiti LLM Gateway has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.