Grafient vs Helicone
Helicone is a proxy-based LLM observability platform. Grafient reads billing APIs directly - no proxy, no SDK, no code changes.
What is Helicone?
Helicone is an LLM observability platform (YC W23) that works by routing your API traffic through their proxy. It provides request-level logging, analytics, caching, and cost tracking. With over 2 billion requests processed, it is one of the most established tools in the LLM observability space.
Feature-by-feature comparison
How Grafient and Helicone compare across the features that matter most for AI cost tracking.
Why teams choose Grafient
Key advantages when your primary goal is tracking AI costs.
No proxy, no latency
Grafient reads cost data directly from provider billing APIs. Your API traffic never touches our servers. There is zero latency impact, zero risk of proxy downtime, and zero chance of breaking your production pipeline.
No code changes required
Helicone requires changing your API base URL or adding custom headers to every LLM call. Grafient requires nothing - paste your billing API key and you are done. No deployment, no code review, no risk.
Broader provider coverage
Track costs across 9 AI providers including Cursor, xAI, ElevenLabs, Vercel AI Gateway, and Amazon Bedrock. Helicone covers fewer providers and cannot track tools that do not route through their proxy.
Purpose-built for cost management
Grafient is built specifically for AI cost tracking - with forecasting, spike detection, model downgrade suggestions, and cache efficiency analysis. Helicone is an observability platform where cost tracking is one of many features.
Pricing comparison
Side-by-side pricing for Grafient and Helicone.
Grafient
2 integrations, 1 alert, 30-day history
10 integrations, unlimited alerts, 365-day history
20 integrations, 5 team members, CSV & digests
Helicone
100K requests/mo, 1 month retention
Unlimited requests, 3 month retention
SOC 2, SSO, dedicated support
Setup comparison
Time from sign-up to seeing your first cost data.
Grafient
Generate a read-only API key from your provider
1 min
Paste the key into Grafient
30 sec
Dashboard is live with historical data
Instant
Helicone
Update your codebase to route API calls through the proxy
30–60 min
Deploy code changes to production
Varies
Verify logging and cost tracking is working
15 min
The verdict
An honest assessment of when to use each tool.
Helicone is a strong choice if you need request-level LLM observability, prompt logging, and response caching. But if your goal is AI cost tracking without touching your production code, Grafient is the simpler, faster path. No proxy, no SDK, no code changes - just connect your billing API keys and see your costs.
What Grafient gives you
Purpose-built features for AI cost management.
Cost Dashboard
Unified view of all your AI spending with charts, trends, and daily breakdowns.
Budget Alerts
Set daily or monthly thresholds and get notified before you overspend.
Cost Breakdown
Drill down by model, day, or provider to understand exactly where your money goes.
Insights
AI-powered spending analysis with anomaly detection and optimization suggestions.
Try Grafient free - see how it compares
Free plan. No credit card. Set up in under two minutes.