At low volume both are free. Past that it depends on shape: Langfuse bills by units (traces and observations) and Helicone by requests and storage, so estimate your monthly volume against each published tier.

Can I self-host either one?

Yes. Langfuse self-hosting is free and documented with Docker Compose and other options. Helicone self-hosts with docker-compose; its Helm chart is part of the enterprise offering.

Where does tokencheat fit?

tokencheat targets the always-on context of AI coding agents — instruction files and MCP tool schemas — not general LLM tracing. Use it alongside either tool.

Comparison

Langfuse vs Helicone for LLM observability

Langfuse is an open-source tracing, evaluation and prompt-management platform you can self-host or use as a cloud service. Helicone is an open-source LLM gateway that logs every request passing through it. Both show where LLM spend goes; they collect it in different ways.

Last verified: 2026-09-19

	Langfuse	Helicone
Focus	Tracing, evals and prompt management via SDK instrumentation	Proxy gateway that logs requests, costs and latency
Pricing	Hobby free · Core $29/mo · Pro $199/mo · self-host free	Hobby free · Pro $79/mo · Team $799/mo

How each collects data

Langfuse is instrumented from your code: its SDKs and integrations send traces, spans and generations, which then feed evaluations, datasets and prompt versioning. That gives deep visibility into multi-step chains and agents, at the cost of adding instrumentation.

Helicone sits in the request path. You point your LLM client at its gateway and every call is logged with its cost and latency, which makes it quick to adopt when the goal is request-level spend and caching rather than chain-level traces.

Pricing and self-hosting

Langfuse Cloud starts with a free Hobby tier (50k units a month, 30 days of data), then Core at $29/month and Pro at $199/month, with usage past the included units billed at $8 per 100k. Self-hosting is free; the core is MIT-licensed, with enterprise features under a separate license in the ee/ directories.

Helicone's Hobby tier is free for 10k requests and 1 GB of storage; Pro is $79/month and Team $799/month, both usage-based above the free allowance. Its code is Apache-2.0 and can be self-hosted with docker-compose; the Helm chart is enterprise-only.

Both companies announced acquisitions in 2026 — Langfuse by ClickHouse and Helicone by Mintlify — so check each roadmap if long-term self-hosting matters to you.

Where tokencheat fits

Neither tool looks at the instruction files a coding agent loads on every turn. tokencheat audits those files — CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, .cursorrules and MCP configs — before they reach a trace, so it complements an observability tool rather than replacing one.

FAQ

Which is cheaper?: At low volume both are free. Past that it depends on shape: Langfuse bills by units (traces and observations) and Helicone by requests and storage, so estimate your monthly volume against each published tier.
Can I self-host either one?: Yes. Langfuse self-hosting is free and documented with Docker Compose and other options. Helicone self-hosts with docker-compose; its Helm chart is part of the enterprise offering.
Where does tokencheat fit?: tokencheat targets the always-on context of AI coding agents — instruction files and MCP tool schemas — not general LLM tracing. Use it alongside either tool.

Sources

Prices and product details verified against these pages on 2026-09-19. Vendors change pricing often — check the source before you buy.