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A directory and guide library for agent-native software factories.

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Helicone

Verified

Open LLM gateway with logging, caching, and spend controls.

Helicone is an open-source observability and gateway layer for LLM APIs: proxy, logs, cache, rate limits. Factories use it as the meter and the flight recorder for inference.

Model independence
Router
Deployment
Cloud, Self-hosted
Open source
Yes
License
Apache-2.0
Pricing model
Mixed
Added / updated
19 Aug 2026 / 19 Aug 2026

www.helicone.ai · Docs · Source

Editorial take

Helicone is a gateway, which is why it is marked router: it sits in front of many providers. That is observability plus a bit of orchestration. It will not judge whether the patch was correct.

Strengths

  • Apache-2.0 proxy you can self-host.
  • Cost, latency, and log visibility across providers.
  • Caching/rate limits as factory controls.

Limitations

  • A proxy outage is an inference outage.
  • Not an eval framework by itself.
  • Cloud vs OSS.

Fields last checked against primary sources on . Pricing and plan names rot; follow the vendor URL.