Get an audit

Head to head · Obs traces · October 2026 research run

Baserun vs Helicone AI Gateway + MCP

Helicone AI Gateway + MCP has a score of 47.1 (D) against Baserun's 7.3 (F). Both do obs traces. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 66 points.

BaserunBaserun · HTTP API F7.3/100retired, not ranked Helicone AI Gateway + MCPHelicone (Mintlify) · HTTP API D47.1/100#387 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Baserun for

No category where it leads by five points or more.

Pick Helicone AI Gateway + MCP for

  • reliability (+50)
  • schema & documentation (+54)
  • agent ergonomics (+65)
  • security & auth (+45)
  • payments & pricing (+30)
  • maintenance & community (+66)
  • transparency & trust (+35)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBaserunHelicone AI Gateway + MCPEdge
Reliability16%20050Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +50
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21569Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +54
Agent ergonomics13%16.2570Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +65
Security & auth14%17.5550Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +45
Payments & pricing10%12.5030Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8066Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +66
Transparency & trust7%8.83671Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +35
Negative events≤150-10
Total7.3 · F47.1 · D

Facts side by side

FactBaserunHelicone AI Gateway + MCP
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorBaserunHelicone (Mintlify)
Hosted endpointhttps://app.baserun.aihttps://ai-gateway.helicone.ai
TransportsHTTPHTTP, stdio
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicencenoneApache-2.0
Tools exposednone3
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2024-06-262026-09-16
Popularity115 npm/wk, 209 PyPI/wk6.2k stars, 4.3k npm/wk, 4.2k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews1/5 (2)2/5 (2)

Verdicts

Baserun

SDKs were MIT licensed and the Python source is still public at github.com/baserun-ai/baserun-py. Service offline since late 2024. api.baserun.ai doesn't resolve and app.baserun.ai serves an expired certificate.

Helicone AI Gateway + MCP

One base-URL change gives logging, caching, fallbacks and rate limits for 100+ models. Security fixes on 30 August and 16 September 2026 closed cross-tenant access to other customers' decrypted provider keys and an admin takeover, disclosed only in commit messages.

Before you call either

Baserun

  1. Don't install baserun from PyPI or npm. Nothing answers behind it
  2. Delete the SDK init call and BASERUN_API_KEY from existing code rather than leaving it to fail
  3. Ignore docs.baserun.ai. It describes a service that no longer runs and doesn't say so

Helicone AI Gateway + MCP

  1. Bring your own provider keys. Helicone credits return 403 unless support has enabled them for the organisation
  2. Rotate any provider keys stored in Helicone before 30 August 2026
  3. Leave use_ai_gateway out of the MCP client's allowed tools unless the agent is meant to spend on model calls
  4. Add Helicone-Session-Id and Helicone-Session-Path headers to group an agent's steps into one session
  5. Use the EU host (eu.helicone.ai) if the account was created there

Other comparisons with Baserun or Helicone AI Gateway + MCP

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report