LLM gateways and observability · RankedHelicone
Helicone is an AI gateway and LLM observability product that teams use to route requests to model providers and to monitor and analyze their LLM usage · helicone.ai ↗
Read the same way at every company size.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
Portkey is first at 36%.
LiteLLM is first at 36%. 0 of 14 models made it the first choice when asked directly.
Bifrost is first at 23%.
Why models recommend it
“My top pick for a typical mid-sized B2B company: Start with Helicone.”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Paraphrase question · first choice
“I recommend Helicone as the best all-around choice”Kimi K2 · Paraphrase question · first choice
“Excellent observability, caching, and cost analytics | Stronger on monitoring than routing; paid plans for advanced usage”Grok 4.20 · Budget-constrained question · alternative
“Lightweight proxy-based option—very quick to set up (one-line change).”Grok 4.20 · Paraphrase question · alternative
What gives them pause
“Managed/third-party hosted gateways with weak privacy controls (e.g., some observability-focused ones like early PromptLayer or Helicone variants)”Grok 4.20 · Negative question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as Helicone, over the 58 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 51 | 22 | Compare → | |
| 46 | 13 | Compare → | |
| 26 | 3 | Compare → | |
| 26 | 0 | Compare → | |
| 23 | 7 | Compare → | |
| 22 | 2 | Compare → | |
| 20 | 0 | View → | |
| 9 | 1 | View → | |
| 9 | 0 | View → | |
| 8 | 0 | View → |
What the models named instead of Helicone →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
At a glance
Stated on Helicone's own site, not checked by Gane.
- For
- The world's fastest-growing AI companies
- Price stated
- Simple, predictable pricing
- Starting price
- Free
- Free plan or trial
- No credit card required, 7-day free trial
- Integrations
- 8
- Certifications
- HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II
- Customers named
- Xpedia AI, DeepAI, Brand.dev, Sunrun, Cogna, Tusk, Wordware
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 50 of the 58 answers that named Helicone and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
150 of the 150 domain citations in answers naming Helicone came from a third party's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 5 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 6 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Kimi K2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comparison | 3,481 | undated | |||
| Blog | 102 | 0 | 2024-01-24 | Observability, LLM gateways | |
| Report or ebook | 32 | undated | ETL | ||
| Template or tool | 4 | undated | |||
| Glossary or explainer | 1 | undated |
Most recent
- 2024-01-24Easily share llm analytics with your blog
- 2024-01-24Archive blog
- 2023-12-18Building a simple near real time blog
- 2023-11-30Every llm one platform introducing blog
- 2023-10-10A letter to yc hopefuls blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page helicone.ai exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. Read September 29, 2026.