Agentic Index
Helicone vs Opik (2026)
Both are open source and both watch what your models do, at different layers, at 5.5 and 7 of 14. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Helicone logs, routes, caches and costs every request through one OpenAI compatible endpoint, free to 10,000 requests then from 79 dollars. Opik from Comet does tracing, LLM as a judge metrics, guardrails and an agent optimizer, free to self host with a free cloud tier. Helicone answers what this is costing; Opik answers whether it is any good, and teams frequently need both answers.
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. Helicone and Opik are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 969 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose Helicone if
- Cost and routing are the immediate problem, and a gateway solves both at once.
- Caching is a saving you can measure in the first week.
- One OpenAI compatible endpoint is the integration simplicity you want.
Choose Opik if
- Documented coverage is broader and quality, not cost, is the current question.
- An agent optimizer acting on evaluation results closes the loop.
- Guardrails alongside evaluation consolidates two concerns.
| At a glance | Helicone | Opik |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Agent infrastructure | Agent infrastructure |
| Entry price | From $79/mo · free tier (10k requests/mo) + open source | Open source, free to self host; free cloud tier; Pro and Enterprise usage based |
| Free / trial | Free Hobby tier: 10,000 requests/month, 1GB storage, 1 seat, no card. Open source and self hostable. | Apache 2.0 open source free to self host, plus a free managed cloud tier |
| Pricing confidence | public exact | public partial |
| Feature | H Helicone |
O Opik |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Partial | No / Not documented |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | H Helicone |
O Opik |
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
From $79/mo · free tier (10k requests/mo) + open source | Open source, free to self host; free cloud tier; Pro and Enterprise usage based |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public, exact | Public, partial |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
Subscription tiers by features and seats, with usage based scaling above included request volume; AI Gateway billed as zero markup provider pass through | spans and usage tier |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Low variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tier
|
Free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Self-serve | Mixed |
More comparisons with Helicone or Opik
Other matchups in agent infrastructure platforms
Not the pairing you were after? These compare a different set of agent infrastructure platforms on the same 14 capabilities.