OpenLIT vs Helicone

OpenLIT vs Helicone

Helicone routes traffic through a proxy to capture telemetry. OpenLIT instruments your existing SDK calls directly — no proxy, no added latency, fully OpenTelemetry-native.

Get Started with OpenLIT View on GitHubHelicone on GitHub ↗
FeatureOpenLITHelicone
Core Architecture
OpenTelemetry-native
Open SourceApache 2.0Apache 2.0
Self-hostable
Proxy-free (no added latency)
SDK-based instrumentation
Vendor-neutral data format
LLM Monitoring
Token usage tracking
Cost per request
Latency / p95 metrics
Prompt & response logging
60+ integrations (LLMs, frameworks, VectorDBs, GPUs)OpenAI-compatible endpoints only
Infrastructure Monitoring
GPU monitoring (NVIDIA + AMD)
Vector DB tracing
Multi-environment tagging
Organisation management
Developer Tools
Prompt Hub (versioning)
EvaluationsBasic
Secrets Vault
Fleet Hub (multi-deployment)
Custom model pricing
Request caching
Rate limiting & key management
Observability Backends
Grafana / Prometheus export
Datadog export
Any OTLP-compatible backend

Choose OpenLIT when…

  • You cannot tolerate proxy-introduced latency on every LLM call
  • You need GPU monitoring for self-hosted models (NVIDIA or AMD)
  • You use non-OpenAI-compatible APIs (Anthropic native SDK, Bedrock, Vertex AI, etc.)
  • You want to forward telemetry to Grafana, Datadog, or any OTLP backend
  • You need Vector DB observability alongside LLM request tracing

Choose Helicone when…

  • You want built-in request caching to reduce API costs
  • You need proxy-layer rate limiting and API key management
  • You prefer a cloud-first setup with minimal local infrastructure

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