In simple English
When your app talks to artificial intelligence models, you need to track what they cost and how fast they reply. This tool sits between your code and the AI provider to record every message. You can also switch between different providers without rewriting your program. It offers a free tier on their cloud service, or you can run it on your own server for free. Setting it up yourself requires managing several database services.
What it is
Helicone is an open-source observability platform and AI gateway for large language models. It lets you monitor costs, trace multi-step agent actions, and route traffic across different providers.
What it is good for
Solo builders who want to track how much money their AI features spend, test different prompts in a visual playground, and set up automatic failbacks if a model provider goes down.
- Tracks exact costs and response times for every request.
- Lets you switch between more than 100 AI models with one API key.
- Includes a prompt playground to test and version changes quickly.
- Self-hosting requires running multiple containers including ClickHouse and Supabase.
- Heavy use on the free cloud tier requires moving to paid plans.
- Database setup can be complex for developers who prefer simple SQLite apps.
manual log files and scattered API billing dashboards
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git clone https://github.com/Helicone/helicone.git cd docker cp .env.example .env ./helicone-compose.sh helicone up