Helicone
Drop-in proxy that logs every request and shows cost per user, per feature, per day.
Helicone sits in front of your provider and records requests, latency and spend with minimal code change. Its per-user cost view answers the question finance always asks first: who is burning the budget?
Best for: Fast cost attribution and request logging
Deploy: Hosted service
What to do about it
- Check licence terms
- Verify data handling
- Calculate operational costs
What it is
Helicone is a drop-in proxy that logs every request and shows cost per user, per feature, per day. It sits in front of a provider and records requests, latency, and spend with minimal code change.
This setup allows Helicone to provide a per-user cost view, which can help answer questions about budget allocation.
Where it fits in a deployment stack
Tools like Helicone are used to solve the problem of understanding and controlling costs in complex systems. They normally sit next to the provider in a production system, taking over the work of logging and analyzing requests.
In a typical deployment, this category of tool is used to provide visibility into system usage and spend. It can help identify areas where costs can be optimized.
These tools are often used in conjunction with other observability and tracing tools to provide a comprehensive view of system performance.
How to evaluate it
To evaluate Helicone, you need to consider how it handles different types of requests and usage patterns. You should also look at how it provides cost visibility and how it can help optimize system spend.
- Measure p95 latency of the retrieval step under 50 concurrent sessions
- Inspect the output of the cost analysis for a large number of users
- Feed it a mix of simple and complex requests to see how it handles different workloads
- Inject failures into the system to see how Helicone handles errors
- Compare the cost estimates from Helicone with actual spend
- Verify that Helicone can handle a large volume of requests without impacting system performance
What to verify before you commit
Before committing to Helicone, you need to verify several key aspects of the tool. You should check its licence terms, data handling practices, and operational costs.
- Check the licence terms to ensure they align with your organization's requirements
- Verify how Helicone handles sensitive user data
- Calculate the operational costs of running Helicone in your production environment
- Test how Helicone behaves in case of failures or errors
- Evaluate the potential for lock-in with Helicone
- Check if Helicone provides any guarantees around uptime and availability
Where this fits in the FDE path
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