Helicone Alternative
Looking for a Helicone alternative?
Since joining Mintlify in March 2026, Helicone has been in maintenance mode, with security patches only and no new features. AI SpendOps is an actively developed, finance-grade LLM cost-tracking proxy with the same drop-in integration and global edge performance, plus the cost attribution and governance teams actually need.
What changed with Helicone
In March 2026, Helicone, one of the original open-source, proxy-based LLM observability tools, was acquired by Mintlify and moved into maintenance mode. It still works and still receives security patches, but it is no longer receiving new features or a product roadmap. For teams running LLM cost tracking in production, that is a good reason to evaluate an actively developed alternative, ideally one you can move to without rewriting any application code.
AI SpendOps vs Helicone
| AI SpendOps | Helicone | |
|---|---|---|
| Status & roadmap | Actively developed | Maintenance mode (since Mar 2026) |
| Drop-in integration (base URL change) | ||
| Providers in one gateway | 15+ | Major providers |
| Per-request token & cost capture | ||
| Attribution by team, feature, env & customer | Custom dimensions | Custom properties |
| Budgets & burn alerts | Limited | |
| Model & provider allow-lists at the edge | ||
| Usage-capture overhead | Async, off the response path | Logged inline at the proxy |
| Hosting | Fully managed edge, nothing to run | Self-host gateway, or cloud (maintenance mode) |
| Pricing | From £29/mo, first 3 months free | Legacy free & paid tiers |
Comparison based on publicly available information as of June 2026, including Helicone’s own maintenance-mode announcement. Helicone is a trademark of its respective owners; this page is provided for comparison purposes only.
Built for scale
Global edge performance
AI SpendOps runs on Cloudflare’s global edge, with usage capture moved entirely off the response path, so the proxy stays out of your way at any volume, with no infrastructure for you to run.
Every request is served from the location nearest your users on Cloudflare's global network.
Usage, cost, and token capture run asynchronously after the response is sent, so the proxy adds near-zero latency to your calls.
Auto-scales with your traffic, with no rate limit imposed by the proxy. Your workloads are never blocked.
Migrate in minutes
A one-line change, not a rewrite
Helicone and AI SpendOps are both base-URL proxies, so switching is as simple as pointing your existing SDK at our gateway and adding one header. You keep your own provider keys and the official SDKs, so there is nothing to re-architect.
- Swap the base URL to proxy.aispendops.com
- Add your X-ASO-API-Key header
- Keep your own provider keys and SDKs
Why teams switch to AI SpendOps
The same drop-in proxy you expect from Helicone, built for finance accountability and governance, and actively developed.
Finance-grade, not just logs
Helicone was built for engineers reading request logs. AI SpendOps maps every token to a team, feature, environment, and customer, so engineering and finance finally see the same numbers and can attribute every penny of AI spend.
Governance enforced at the edge
Restrict which models and providers each API key can call, and reject untagged requests before they ever reach the provider. Control model sprawl instead of just observing it after the bill lands.
15+ providers, one gateway
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Groq, Mistral, DeepSeek, OpenRouter and more, unified in a single FinOps view, with cache, reasoning, and modality tokens split out so your dashboard matches the invoice.
Actively developed
Following the Mintlify acquisition, Helicone receives security patches but no new features. AI SpendOps is shipping. The proxy, pricing pipeline, and dashboards are under active development.
Frequently asked questions
Is Helicone still being maintained?
As of March 2026, Helicone was acquired by Mintlify and moved into maintenance mode. It receives security patches but no new features or roadmap, per Helicone's own announcement. If you depend on it in production, now is a sensible time to evaluate an actively developed alternative.
How hard is it to migrate from Helicone to AI SpendOps?
Both products are base-URL proxies, so migration is essentially a one-line change: point your existing OpenAI, Anthropic, or other SDK at proxy.aispendops.com and add a single X-ASO-API-Key header. No SDK wrapper, no application rewrite. Runnable examples for Python, TypeScript, and .NET are in our open-source examples repo.
Do I keep my own provider API keys?
Yes. AI SpendOps is BYO-key: you keep your own OpenAI, Anthropic, and other provider keys, you keep using the official SDKs, and you can turn the proxy off in a single config line. No lock-in.
What does AI SpendOps add over Helicone?
The biggest differences are that AI SpendOps never stores your prompts (Helicone logs full requests and responses), it is built for financial reporting rather than engineering debugging, it runs fully managed on a global edge rather than self-hosted, and it is actively developed while Helicone is in maintenance mode. Both give you drop-in proxying, per-request cost, and tagging by feature or customer across providers.
Is AI SpendOps open source?
AI SpendOps is a managed service rather than a self-hosted open-source project. Our integration examples for Python, TypeScript, and .NET are open source under the MIT license, and because you keep your own provider keys there is no lock-in.
Move off maintenance mode
Switch from Helicone in minutes and get finance-grade AI cost tracking. First 3 months free.
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