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.
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.
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 |