# Agent Tree vs Helicone AI Gateway + MCP (slim)

> Agent Tree scores 52.5 (D) to Helicone AI Gateway's 47 (D) for agent tracing. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-tree-vs-helicone.md (~4,600 tokens) · this version ~2,330 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-tree-vs-helicone.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-tree-vs-helicone
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-01
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Agent Tree scores 52.5 (D) on agent readiness against Helicone AI Gateway + MCP's 47 (D), and leads in 1 of 7 scored categories. Helicone AI Gateway + MCP leads on reliability, schema & documentation, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do agent tracing.

- Agent Tree: D 52.5, rank #897 of 1260 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/agent-tree.min.md
- Helicone AI Gateway + MCP: D 47, rank #1033 of 1260 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/helicone.min.md
- Agent Tree, good for Watching and steering Claude Code sub-agents from a side pane Ahead on Payments & pricing, 60 against 30. Also No key needed to call it; No incidents deducted, where Helicone AI Gateway + MCP loses 10 points for them.
- Helicone AI Gateway + MCP, good for A team that wants request logging and cost tracking through a gateway with almost no code, and could swap it out later. Ahead on Reliability, 50 against 33; Schema & documentation, 69 against 50; Maintenance & community, 66 against 60; Transparency & trust, 70 against 63. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Runs on your own machine; Free to start without a card.

| Category | Agent Tree | Helicone AI Gateway + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 33 | 50 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 50 | 69 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 49 | 50 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 60 | 66 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 63 | 70 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Agent Tree | Helicone AI Gateway + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent framework | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Mike Pollow (Digitalroots) | Helicone (Mintlify) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://ai-gateway.helicone.ai` |
| Transports |  | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| Licence | MIT (Copyright (c) 2026 Mike Pollow, Digitalroots) | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | 3 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-29 | 2026-09-16 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | 2024-09-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2023-02-28 |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 6.2k stars, 4.3k npm/wk, 4.2k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Agent Tree +30: Agent Tree 60 (Self-hosted rule. No payment protocol (0). Free under MIT with nothing to buy (20). No card or account (20). A person installs it with one command and no sign-up (20). 60 in all.); Helicone AI Gateway + MCP 30 (No x402 or other machine payment (0). Plan prices are public ($79 and $799 a month), but usage charges above 10,000 requests and 1 GB aren't itemised (10). Hobby is free with no card (20). A person has to sign up in a browser to get a key. Self-hosting is free but isn't an agent route (0).)
- Schema & documentation, Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +19: Agent Tree 50 (Framework reading, docs a model can follow, as superpowers was read. types/index.d.ts types the pane's state, and plugin.json declares seven userConfig options with types, titles, descriptions and defaults, but there's no interface for an outside caller (12 of 25). README in English and German, a nine-step GUIDE.md and PRIVACY.md, all Markdown in the repository; no llms.txt (10). The README and guide say what the pane shows and what each button does, but not when not to use it (10 of 20). Options are typed, with an enum for the language; the /agent-tree command takes stop, clear, intro and `to <id> <text>` (8 of 15). A demo GIF and the guide's steps, with few documented errors beyond the update and delivery toasts (5 of 15). Semver tags but no changelog or release notes read (5 of 15). 50 in all.); Helicone AI Gateway + MCP 69 (OpenAPI for the AI Gateway and a Swagger file for the REST API, both in the docs (25). llms.txt at docs.helicone.ai (10). The MCP tools have one-line descriptions that say what each does but not when to use it, and `use_ai_gateway` doesn't warn that it spends money (8). Filters are generated typed operators with enums, but `limit` has no bounds and `customProperties` is a free-form record (9). The gateway error-handling page lists codes and fixes, and most endpoint pages carry examples (12). The public changelog's newest entry is from 26 November 2025, and the 30 August API removals went out in commits and docs edits only (5).)
- Reliability, Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +17: Agent Tree 33 (Local-package reading, as for superpowers and tokeneconomizer. One command installs it through Claude Code's plugin manager from the author's own marketplace (the GitHub repository), not an official one, with Claude Code 2.1.292 or later stated and 2.1.316 tested (15 of 20). No .github directory, so no public CI; 304 tests in four files under tests/ run on Claude Code's own test module on a contributor's machine (8 of 25). Issues couldn't be read, as github.com was unreachable from this session (5 of 25, unchecked). 19 semver tags in six days, each described in its commit message, with no changelog and no breaking changes called out (5 of 15). Version 0.5.4 (0). 33 in all.); Helicone AI Gateway + MCP 50 (Better Stack page at status.helicone.ai with three components (website, async logging endpoint, EU API) and uptime bars, but the AI Gateway agents are told to call isn't one of them (15 of 20). No incident write-ups at all. The bars show the async logging endpoint at 98.147 per cent and the EU API at 96.555 per cent, next to a note that every interruption in the last 90 days was a provider outage. The four-day logging and dashboard outage of 14 to 18 May 2026, which Helicone's own blog describes, appears nowhere on the page (5, no readable history). Ingestion and API rate limits published per plan on the pricing page (15). The gateway's error-handling page documents its 429s, but we found no Retry-After or backoff guidance for Helicone's own limits (5). No SLA found (0). Gateway and logging are GA (10).)
- Transparency & trust, Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +7: Agent Tree 63 (MIT, an OSI licence (30). PRIVACY.md is the manifest's privacy page and matches the code. Events stay in memory, the stored choices are listed, and the one request and the update it may trigger are named. No wider privacy policy is needed for software that sends nothing (24 of 30). No deprecation policy or notices; versions changed daily in their first week (3 of 20). No telemetry in the source. The update check is disclosed in the README and PRIVACY.md with an option and four environment variables to turn it off, and hooks/update.ts reads the same switches. It was added and documented on 28 October 2026, a minute apart (20). 77 in all.); Helicone AI Gateway + MCP 70 (Apache-2.0 (30). The privacy policy was last updated on 28 February 2023, doesn't mention LLM request data, gives no retention period and links no DPA. Retention per plan is on the pricing page. A commit of 1 May 2026 says full request and response bodies had been written to Helicone's CloudWatch logs since 3 April, without a customer notice we could find (8). Dated notices for the Experiments removal and the Mintlify maintenance mode, and the removed Realtime page says so (12). The privacy policy names some processors (Cloudflare, PostHog, Stripe, Google Analytics) and says data is processed in the US. No full subprocessor list (10).)
- Maintenance & community, Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +6: Agent Tree 60 (v0.5.4 tagged on 29 October 2026 and a commit on 31 October (30). 19 tags from v0.2.2 (24 October) to v0.5.4 (29 October), far more than three in 90 days (20). Issue and pull-request replies couldn't be read, as github.com was unreachable (5 of 25). Not in Claude's official plugin directory; claude.com/plugins/agent-tree answered 404 (0). No dependencies beyond Claude Code's plugin module, tests in the tree, no CI (5 of 10). 60 in all.); Helicone AI Gateway + MCP 66 (No tagged release since 2025-08-21 and no changelog entry since 26 November 2025, but the hosted service took deploys on 13 and 16 September 2026 carrying security fixes (30, counted as the last published API change). More than three deploy tags in 90 days, none with release notes (15). 56 open issues. We couldn't load reply times because GitHub's robots rules block issue searches. The product is in maintenance mode by its own notice (8). `@helicone/mcp` 0.1.6 was last published on 2025-11-04 (8). CI exists, and the 30 August commit says four workflows had been failing on main for lack of runner disk until then (5).)