Helicone alternative for prompt and cost tracking

If you want a Helicone alternative for prompt logging + cost tracking, here are the strongest options depending on what you need:

Best alternatives

1) Langfuse

• Open-source and self-hostable
• Tracks prompts, completions, token usage, latency, traces
• Good for debugging, evals, and prompt versioning
• Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, LangChain, LiteLLM, etc.

Best for: teams that want an observability platform similar to Helicone, but more control.

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2) Portkey

• AI gateway with logging, analytics, retries, caching, routing
• Tracks usage and cost across models/providers
• Easy to sit between your app and model APIs
• Good for production traffic management

Best for: teams that want both observability and an LLM gateway.

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3) LangSmith

• Strong tracing and debugging for LLM apps
• Great with LangChain ecosystem
• Supports prompt logs, runs, evaluation workflows
• Cost tracking is available, though not as gateway-oriented as Helicone

Best for: LangChain-heavy apps.

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4) LiteLLM Proxy + Dashboard

• Open-source proxy layer for many model providers
• Centralized logging, spend tracking, rate limiting, routing
• Can act as a drop-in gateway across OpenAI-compatible APIs

Best for: teams wanting provider abstraction plus cost controls.

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5) Humanloop

• Prompt management, evals, feedback loops, logging
• More product/workflow oriented
• Useful for teams iterating on prompts in production

Best for: prompt ops and human-in-the-loop workflows.

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Quick recommendation

• Closest open-source alternative to Helicone: Langfuse
• Best gateway + cost control: Portkey or LiteLLM
• Best if you already use LangChain: LangSmith

If you want a simple stack

A common setup is:

• LiteLLM Proxy for routing + spend tracking
• Langfuse for tracing + prompt observability

This gives you both infrastructure control and deep analytics.

If you want, I can also give you:

1. a feature comparison table, or
2. the best option for your stack if you tell me whether you use OpenAI, Anthropic, LangChain, or self-hosted models.