Helicone alternative
A Helicone Alternative with Someone Watching the Logs
Helicone Pro is $79 a month with unlimited seats and one month of log retention (October 2026), the same price as our AI Gateway. The difference is who does the watching. In March 2026 Helicone announced it had joined Mintlify and that its services would stay live in maintenance mode.
With Cascadia you get
- Same price, run for you
- 90 days of request history
- Spend caps agreed with you
- Fallback and retries handled
- A written monthly report
- Nothing installed on your machines
Cascadia vs Helicone at a Glance
Three Questions That Decide It
Who Reads the Dashboard Each Week?
How Far Back Do You Need to Look?
Does Maintenance Mode Concern You?
Side by Side
| Helicone | Cascadia | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $79 a month on Pro | $79 a month per organization |
| Log retention | –1 month on Pro, 3 on Team | 90 days |
| Seats | Unlimited on Pro | Priced per organization |
| Caching and rate limits | Included on Pro | Included, set with you |
| Fallbacks | Automatic on Pro | Handled, with retries |
| Product status | –Maintenance mode since March 2026 | Watched by us every month |
| Self-hosting | Open source, on-premises on Enterprise | ×Not offered |
| Who watches it | ×Your team | We do |
Price
Log Retention
Seats
Caching and Rate Limits
Fallbacks
Product Status
Self-Hosting
Who Watches It
What Ships in the Standard Plan Here
Helicone gives you the logs, the dashboard, and alerts on Pro. Reading them, deciding what a normal month looks like, and acting when a month is not normal stays with whoever on your team holds the login.
- The gateway in front of every provider you already call
- The prompt, reply, model, and cost recorded for each request
- Tokens and cost broken out by application
- Spend caps enforced at the gateway, agreed with you first
- Rate limits set for each application
- Fallback to another provider when one goes down
- Ninety days of history on the one plan we sell
- A monthly written report on what changed
- Your provider keys stay yours, and so do the logs
- Caching, so the same answer is not paid for twice
Where Cascadia Goes Further
Same monthly price. The difference is that the work around the software is ours.
Ninety Days Instead of One Month
Helicone Pro keeps logs for one month, and Team, at $799 a month, keeps three (October 2026). We keep 90 days on the single plan we offer.
The Report Arrives Already Read
Helicone has alerts and reports that you configure. Ours turns up each month with the reading done: what was spent, by which application, and what looked unusual.
Limits Somebody Actually Chose
Rate limits and caching exist in both. Here a person works out the numbers with you, application by application, before anything goes live.
No Roadmap for You to Track
Helicone says its services remain live in maintenance mode, with security updates, new models, and fixes still shipping. If you would rather not follow what that means over the next few years, following the gateway is our job.
Who This Comparison Is For
Teams Happy with Helicone Today
If it works and someone reads it, there is no urgent reason to move. By Helicone’s own account, maintenance mode still includes security updates and new models.
Teams Who Need More Than a Month of History
A question about last quarter’s spend cannot be answered from 30 days of logs. On Helicone, that longer history comes with the $799 Team plan.
Teams Where the Login Belongs to Someone Who Left
Observability tools tend to have exactly one real user. When that person moves on, the alerts keep arriving in an inbox nobody opens.
Choose Helicone if
- Someone on staff already reads Helicone
- You want a free tier to start with
- You need on-premises deployment
Choose Cascadia if
- Nobody has time to watch the dashboard
- You want 90 days of history for $79
- You want the month explained in writing
Moving from Helicone in Four Steps
Helicone already sits between your applications and your providers, so most of the move is pointing them somewhere else. The old path stays live until the new one has proved itself.
- 1
We Look at What Helicone Is Recording
Which providers and applications appear, which caching and rate limits are on, and what an ordinary month costs.
- 2
We Set Caps and Limits with You
Spend caps, rate limits, and caching rules for each application are agreed on a call before any traffic moves.
- 3
Applications Switch Endpoints One at a Time
Each application is pointed at the new endpoint in turn, and Helicone keeps running until you are satisfied.
- 4
The Month Gets Reported
The first full picture arrives within a week. After that, a written report each month covers spend by application and anything worth a second look.
What Clients Say About Working with Cascadia
“I’ve always dreaded website management, but Cascadia has done an incredible job with my WordPress site, making it one less thing for me to worry about.”
“I’ve worked with Cascadia for several years now. They are always ready to help in any way I ask and can implement my ideas with ease. A company that values their clients!”
“Cascadia has been great to work with! We recently needed some updates, and Cascadia was quick to get them completed! We highly recommend Cascadia Web Services.”
“Cascadia is very responsive and we’re happy with them as our primary IT vendor.”
“They do great work, been using for years. Prompt responses to requests.”
Ready to Move from Helicone?
Talk to us about your setupAsk us
Helicone Alternative Questions
Plain answers about switching, the acquisition, and what you keep.
See AI GatewayStill have a question?
What is a Helicone alternative?
Anything else that records and controls your AI calls. That covers gateway products such as Portkey, LiteLLM, and OpenRouter, and managed services like ours, where a person sets the gateway up and keeps an eye on it.
Is Helicone still supported?
Helicone announced on March 3, 2026 that it had been acquired by Mintlify, and said its services would remain live for the foreseeable future in maintenance mode. Its post says security updates, new models, and bug and performance fixes keep shipping. Whether that suits you depends on how long you plan to rely on it.
They cost the same. What is the difference?
Helicone Pro at $79 a month is software with unlimited seats, one month of logs, caching, rate limits, and fallbacks, which your team configures and reads. Our $79 a month buys a gateway with 90 days of logs that we configure, watch, and report on. Same number, different thing being bought.
Is Helicone open source?
Helicone describes itself as open source LLM observability, and its Enterprise plan offers on-premises deployment (October 2026). We do not offer self-hosting, so if that is a requirement, Helicone or another open source option will suit you better.
Can we keep our history from Helicone?
Your Helicone logs stay in your Helicone account for as long as its retention allows. Our 90 days of history starts from the day your applications switch endpoints, which is worth knowing before you close anything.
Do my applications need code changes?
Only the endpoint. They stop calling Helicone’s gateway and call ours. Your provider keys stay yours, and pointing back takes the same one change.
Where does my data go?
Prompts and responses pass through the infrastructure the gateway runs on. Before anything is switched on we walk you through what that means, and if it does not work for you we say so plainly. You own the logs.
What happens if a provider goes down?
The gateway falls back to another provider and handles the retries, so an outage at one of them does not stop your application.
How quickly does setup start?
Within two business days of hearing which providers your applications use, with the first full picture inside a week.
Ready to hand the watching over?
$79 a month per organization, the same as Helicone Pro, with 90 days of logs and a person here setting the caps and writing the monthly report. Content Guardrails can be added for $49 a month if you also want sensitive data stopped at the gateway.