Comparison · June 2026
SpendProxy vs Helicone
Helicone is an open-source (Apache-2.0) AI gateway and LLM observability platform. You route requests through its gateway via a base-URL change and get logging, sessions, traces, caching, and provider failover across 100+ models.
What Helicone is genuinely good at
- ✓Genuinely open source with a real self-host path (docker-compose, Helm)
- ✓One-line integration and a generous free tier (10K requests)
- ✓Mature gateway: 100+ models, automatic provider failover, 0% markup billing
- ✓Enforced per-user spend caps via rate-limit policies
Side by side
| Helicone | SpendProxy | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Observability + gateway: route, debug, and analyze LLM apps | Cut LLM spend: billing-accurate cost tracking plus optimization engines that act on traffic |
| Request path | Inline proxy (base-URL change), or async logging with reduced features | Inline proxy — one base-URL change |
| Hosting & data path | Cloud SaaS primarily; self-host (Apache-2.0) or on-prem at Enterprise tier | Licensed Docker container inside your VPC. SQLite-local storage. No request data leaves your network. |
| Automatic cost optimization | Opt-in per request: caching requires a Helicone-Cache-Enabled header; routing picks the cheapest provider for the same model, never a cheaper model; budget limits configured via per-request header policies | Five engines that take action: prompt cache injection, response dedup, model routing with circuit breaker, budget guardrails, retry-storm suppression. Each runs in off, monitor (log what it would do), or autopilot mode. |
| Cost tracking | Request-level cost logging across providers | Provider-specific billing semantics: cached tokens, reasoning tokens, and streaming priced the way the provider actually bills. |
| Budgets & enforcement | Cost-based rate limits (e.g. $/hour/user) — returns 429 when exceeded | Per route, tag, or API key — warn or hard-block. |
| Provider coverage | 100+ models through the gateway | OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini. Deliberately deep on three providers rather than broad. |
| Source / license | Open source, Apache-2.0 | Commercial. Licensed, air-gapped container. |
| Pricing | Free (10K req) · Pro $79/mo · Team $799/mo · Enterprise custom | $2,500 30-day pilot, then $1,500/mo flat. |
Choose Helicone when
- →You want broad multi-provider coverage behind one API
- →You need observability and debugging first, cost reduction second
- →You want open source with a free tier to start today
Choose SpendProxy when
- →Cost is the actual problem and you want the proxy to act, not just report — cache injection and routing happen automatically, with a monitor mode before autopilot
- →Compliance means request data cannot transit a third-party cloud
- →You want billing-accurate numbers including cached and reasoning tokens
See it on your own traffic
30-day pilot inside your VPC. Monitor mode shows exactly what each engine would save before anything changes. If the numbers aren't there, you'll know in week one.
Helicone facts verified June 2026 against their official documentation. If anything here is out of date, email hi@spendproxy.com and we'll fix it.