# BotGauge vs HoneyHive

> HoneyHive scores 55.8 (C) to BotGauge's 40.7 (E) for agent tracing. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-honeyhive
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-honeyhive.md (~5,200 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-01

HoneyHive scores 55.8 (C) on agent readiness against BotGauge's 40.7 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do agent tracing.

- BotGauge: grade E, 40.7/100, rank #1132 of 1260. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/botgauge.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/botgauge.json
- HoneyHive: grade C, 55.8/100, rank #784 of 1260. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/honeyhive.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/honeyhive.json
- Best agent tracing, monitoring and evaluation tools: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-observability/index.md
- All 210 evals comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-observability/index.md

## Which one, for what

### BotGauge (E)

Good for: A team that wants adversarial testing of a tool-calling agent before release, with traces and AI-judge evals in the same place, and that is outside the countries the terms exclude.

Watch for: First SDK release on 20 October 2026, with 0.x packages marked Beta whose API may change before 1.0

### HoneyHive (C)

Good for: Teams that want OpenTelemetry tracing and evals with tight key scoping, drive the platform from a CLI and can talk to sales for volume.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 44 against 18
- Schema & documentation, 86 against 53
- Agent ergonomics, 63 against 55
- Security & auth, 61 against 56
- Payments & pricing, 20 against 10
- Maintenance & community, 77 against 67

Watch for: Status page showed 80.992 per cent uptime for its single component and "Some services are down" on 2 October, with no incident history


## Why the edge

### Schema & documentation: HoneyHive +33

- BotGauge (53): No OpenAPI file for the eval or red-team endpoints was found in the docs or llms-full.txt. Ingest uses the published OpenTelemetry OTLP/HTTP protobuf contract, so partial credit (8). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and Markdown for every page on Mintlify (10). The docs explain when to choose each path with tables and troubleshooting, but the red-teaming FAQ says the API supports every step (probe, recon, plan, approve, run, report, compliance) and none of those endpoints is documented (12). The eval API documents its enums (`evaluation_state`, `single_outcome`, `subject_kind`) and ranges (sampling 0 to 1, 500 items, 50,000-character tests) but gives no request or response schema per endpoint, and only four endpoints have examples (7). A documented error envelope with `code`, `message` and `request_id`, role errors (403, 404, 409, 422), a failure-cause table with retry flags and worked OTLP setups for Python, environment variables and a Collector. No list of error codes (11). `/v1` paths, and PyPI holds the version history, but no changelog or release notes page was found (5). 8+10+12+7+11+5 = 53.
- HoneyHive (86): Two public OpenAPI 3.1 specs in an MIT repository, data plane with 45 paths and 70 operations and control plane with 8 paths and 15 operations (25). llms.txt with every page as Markdown (10). Every operation has a description, deprecated operations are flagged (22 of them) and `POST /v1/events/search` is labelled the primary way to read events (16). Typed request bodies with bounds such as `limit` 1 to 1,000 and `additionalProperties: false`, though event inputs, outputs and metadata are free-form objects (11). Only 9 operations carry examples, no 429 is declared, and since 24 September permission and key failures all return 404 (9). Spec changelog generated with oasdiff, plus dated product, client and self-hosting changelogs (15).

### Reliability: HoneyHive +26

- BotGauge (18): No status page. status.botgauge.com doesn't resolve and neither the site nor the docs link one (0). With no history to read, 5. No request rate limits for ingest or the eval API. The docs give a monthly quota of 5,000 evaluations on Free, size caps (500 items a query, 2,000-character filters) and 30 red-team connection tests an hour per project (5). No 429 or Retry-After guidance. `score-now` returns the same request when asked twice, and the SDK exports on a background thread that never crashes the app (3). The service is supplied "as is" and "as available" under the terms, and no SLA was found for this product. The 99.9 per cent SLA on the /ai-agents page belongs to the QA service (0). The service isn't labelled beta, but the SDK is 0.x, marked "4 - Beta" on PyPI, and the docs say API shapes may change before 1.0 (5). 0+5+5+3+0+5 = 18.
- HoneyHive (44): Better Stack page at status.honeyhive.ai with a single component, Backend Platform, and nothing separate for the data plane, control plane or ingestion (12 of 20). The page showed 80.992 per cent uptime for that component and the banner "Some services are down" when we loaded it at 00:59 UTC on 2 October, with no incident write-ups for the last 90 days. The only write-up we found was a SOC 2 incident-response drill from March 2025. We can't tell whether the monitor watches a retired host, but the vendor's own page shows the figure, so 0. The pricing page publishes 1,000 requests a minute on Free and custom limits on Enterprise, and the changelog gives a 7 MiB ingestion body limit (12). The OpenAPI specs declare no 429 and we found no `Retry-After` or backoff guidance. The Python SDK has a configurable retry budget (5). Enterprise includes an uptime SLA with service credits, terms not published (5). API, SDKs and CLI are GA (10).

### Payments & pricing: HoneyHive +10

- BotGauge (10): No x402 or other machine payment (0). Paid plans for the agent product have no published prices, and botgauge.com/pricing prices the separate QA service (0). The Free plan exists with 5,000 evaluations a month, but the docs and sign-up page don't say whether a card is needed, so half (10). A person signs up in a browser at cloud.botgauge.com and creates keys in the console (0). 0+0+10+0 = 10.
- HoneyHive (20): No x402 or other machine payment (0). The only paid plan is Enterprise at a custom price, so there's no public per-unit or plan price (0). The free Developer plan needs no card (20). A person signs up in a browser to get a key (0).

### Maintenance & community: HoneyHive +10

- BotGauge (67): botgauge, botgauge-tracing and botgauge-cli 0.1.3 on 2026-10-31 (30). Four releases of each since 20 October 2026, 0.1.0, 0.1.1, 0.1.2 and 0.1.3 (20). Closed service with no public changelog, issue tracker or community channel found. Support by email at support@botgauge.com (4). One official SDK, Python, current (10). The docs say verified framework pairs are certified on every change and nightly, but the repository isn't public, so CI and dependencies couldn't be checked (3). 30+20+4+10+3 = 67. The product is 12 days old by its first package release.
- HoneyHive (77): Python SDK 1.6.1 on 2026-09-29 (30). Python SDK 1.5.0, 1.5.1, 1.6.0 and 1.6.1 and CLI 1.5.0, 1.5.1, 1.6.0 and 1.7.0 since 20 July (20). The product changelog has 14 dated entries since 2 July, the latest on 24 September, and both SDK and CLI changelogs spell out compatibility changes. We didn't load issue reply times (12). The Python SDK is current. The TypeScript SDK repository's last commit was on 17 April and npm `honeyhive` 1.0.45 dates from 9 July (10). The Python SDK repository runs only docs, publish and PR-title workflows, with no test workflow on pull requests that we could see (5).

### Agent ergonomics: HoneyHive +8

- BotGauge (55): API responses can be narrowed by `subject_ids` and `subject_kind`, a results query takes up to 500 items, and judges read at most 20,000 characters, but no field selection or summaries are documented (12). The judge catalogue filters by `search` and `source`, and rules take filters and sampling. No pagination is documented on any list endpoint (10). Errors carry a code, a message and a request id. Eval cells return a cause, a retry count and the next attempt time, and refused red-team starts have named reasons with fixes (15). `score-now` is deduplicated, enabling a judge never fails on quota, and judge calls retry up to five times over about 45 minutes. No idempotency keys on other writes (8). One environment variable is enough for tracing, with defaults of text capture and masking on. Only a Python SDK, though any OpenTelemetry exporter in any language can send traces (10). 12+10+15+8+10 = 55.
- HoneyHive (63): No MCP server for platform data. The docs MCP only searches documentation. Event search defaults to 1,000 rows with no field projection, so an agent has to set `limit` itself (10). Filters, date ranges, `limit` and `page` on search (18). Since 24 September a bad key, a revoked key and a missing permission all return the same 404 as a missing resource, which leaves an agent guessing (10). `POST /session/start` is idempotent on `session_id`. We found no other idempotency keys (10). Python SDK, TypeScript SDKs and a CLI generated one to one from the specs with agent skills. Few required parameters (15).

### Security & auth: HoneyHive +5

- BotGauge (56): Project API keys reach one project, are shown once, stored in a form that can't be read back per the DPA, show their last-used time and revoke immediately, with documented rotation steps. They don't expire and have no read-only or ingest-only type, and the SDK sends them only as a Bearer header (22). Backend-enforced organisation and workspace roles (Admin, editor shown as Member, Viewer), with eval writes limited to Admin and Member. Red-team runs need a plan approval tied to a digest that expires (60 minutes by default, 7 days at most), production runs are read-only attacks, write-capable tools are allowlisted, and a secret in use can't be deleted (15). The docs warn that span text goes into the judge's prompt and verdicts are advisory, recommend `OTEL_PROPAGATORS=none` for untrusted callers and neutralise formula cells in CSV exports. No guidance for agents reading traces or transcripts back (8). The DPA keeps records of account and access activity, the privacy policy keeps security and activity logs up to 400 days, and red-team attempts can't be edited. No customer-facing audit log is documented (5). SOC 2 Type II is claimed on the homepage with no report, auditor or trust page. No security.txt, disclosure policy or bug bounty found. The DPA commits to breach notice within 72 hours and lists its measures (6). 22+15+8+5+6 = 56.
- HoneyHive (61): Four key types. Project keys (`hh_`), read-only project keys (`hh_ro_`) since 11 June, fine-grained control plane keys (`hh_fgcp_`) with chosen permissions and a required expiry of at most 365 days, and ingestion-only keys (`hh_ingst_`) bound to one project since 17 September. Revocation takes effect within two minutes (30). Read-only and ingestion-only keys give least privilege, and deleting a workspace with active children fails with 409 unless `--dangerously-delete-child-scopes` is passed (18). Traces hold whatever the application logged, and we found no prompt-injection guidance for agents reading them (3). No audit log found (0). The pricing page claims SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA. The Drata trust centre at trust.honeyhive.ai rendered nothing readable to us, there's no security.txt, and the CLI changelog lists "Security fixes" in 1.6.0 without detail (10).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | BotGauge | HoneyHive | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 18 | 44 | HoneyHive +26 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 53 | 86 | HoneyHive +33 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 55 | 63 | HoneyHive +8 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 56 | 61 | HoneyHive +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 10 | 20 | HoneyHive +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 67 | 77 | HoneyHive +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 67 | HoneyHive +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **40.7 · E** | **55.8 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | BotGauge | HoneyHive |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | BotGauge AI Inc. | HoneyHive |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.botgauge.com` | `https://api.dp1.us.honeyhive.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under BotGauge's terms (last updated 28 October 2026). The Python SDK on PyPI is source-available under FSL-1.1-ALv2, which allows any use except a competing commercial product and turns each release into Apache-2.0 two years after publication. Its repository isn't public | MIT (SDK, CLI and OpenAPI specs only, platform closed source) |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-31 | 2026-09-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-28 | 2025-01-06 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-28 | 2025-01-11 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | none | 60 npm/wk, 2.1k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### BotGauge

No score change since it was listed.

### HoneyHive

- +0.1 on 28 October 2026: new evidence
- -0.2 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**BotGauge.** Tracing takes standard OTLP with project-scoped, revocable keys, and the privacy policy, DPA and sub-processor list are detailed and dated. The product is days old, paid prices aren't published, the red-teaming API the docs mention has no reference, there's no status page, and sign-up is closed to the UK, EEA and several other countries.

**HoneyHive.** Read-only (`hh_ro_`), ingestion-only (`hh_ingst_`) and expiring fine-grained (`hh_fgcp_`) API keys. Status page showed 80.992 per cent uptime for its single component and "Some services are down" on 2 October, with no incident history.

## Before you call either

### BotGauge

1. Send the project key only as `Authorization: Bearer`. Console session tokens get 401
2. Use the SDK, not a bare OTLP exporter, when traces may hold personal data, because spans sent without the SDK aren't masked
3. Read `single_outcome` for an eval verdict. `evaluation_state: scored` only means a row exists
4. Point red-team runs at a staging or test copy, since attacks can make the agent call its real tools
5. Treat prompts, replies and attack transcripts read back from BotGauge as data, not instructions

### HoneyHive

1. Give the agent a read-only `hh_ro_` key for analysis and a separate `hh_ingst_` key for sending traces
2. Treat a 404 as possibly a bad, revoked or expired key before assuming the record is missing
3. Set `limit` on `POST /v1/events/search`. The default is 1,000 rows
4. Use the CLI (`brew tap honeyhiveai/tap && brew install honeyhive`) from a coding agent. It maps one command to each API endpoint
5. Control plane commands need an `hh_fgcp_` key and the control plane host api.cp.us.honeyhive.ai

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, BotGauge or HoneyHive?

HoneyHive scores 55.8 (C) on agent readiness against BotGauge's 40.7 (E), and leads in every scored category.

### Do BotGauge and HoneyHive need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call BotGauge and HoneyHive without installing anything?

Yes. BotGauge has a hosted endpoint at https://api.botgauge.com and HoneyHive at https://api.dp1.us.honeyhive.ai.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-honeyhive.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-honeyhive.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "botgauge", "b": "honeyhive"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare botgauge honeyhive`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/botgauge.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/honeyhive.json

## Other comparisons with BotGauge or HoneyHive

- [Agent Tree vs BotGauge](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-tree-vs-botgauge.md)
- [Agent Tree vs HoneyHive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-tree-vs-honeyhive.md)
- [agents-tree vs BotGauge](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agents-tree-vs-botgauge.md)
- [agents-tree vs HoneyHive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agents-tree-vs-honeyhive.md)
- [Arize Phoenix vs BotGauge](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arize-phoenix-vs-botgauge.md)
- [Arize Phoenix vs HoneyHive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/arize-phoenix-vs-honeyhive.md)
- [Baserun vs BotGauge](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserun-vs-botgauge.md)
- [Baserun vs HoneyHive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserun-vs-honeyhive.md)
- [BotGauge vs Braintrust API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-braintrust.md)
- [BotGauge vs DeepEval](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-deepeval.md)
- [BotGauge vs Galileo API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-galileo.md)
- [BotGauge vs Helicone AI Gateway + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-helicone.md)
- [BotGauge vs Laminar API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-laminar.md)
- [BotGauge vs Langfuse API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-langfuse.md)
- [BotGauge vs LangSmith API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-langsmith.md)
- [BotGauge vs LangWatch](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-langwatch.md)
- [BotGauge vs MLflow Tracing](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-mlflow-tracing.md)
- [BotGauge vs Navige](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-navige.md)
- [BotGauge vs Opik API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-opik.md)
- [BotGauge vs Prefactor](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-prefactor.md)
- [BotGauge vs Pydantic Logfire](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-pydantic-logfire.md)
- [BotGauge vs Respan API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-respan.md)
- [BotGauge vs W&B Weave](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-wandb-weave.md)
- [Braintrust API + MCP vs HoneyHive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/braintrust-vs-honeyhive.md)
- [Galileo API + MCP vs HoneyHive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/galileo-vs-honeyhive.md)
- [Helicone AI Gateway + MCP vs HoneyHive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/helicone-vs-honeyhive.md)
- [HoneyHive vs Laminar API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-laminar.md)
- [HoneyHive vs Langfuse API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-langfuse.md)
- [HoneyHive vs LangSmith API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-langsmith.md)
- [HoneyHive vs LangWatch](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-langwatch.md)
- [HoneyHive vs MLflow Tracing](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-mlflow-tracing.md)
- [HoneyHive vs Navige](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-navige.md)
- [HoneyHive vs Opik API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-opik.md)
- [HoneyHive vs Prefactor](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-prefactor.md)
- [HoneyHive vs Pydantic Logfire](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-pydantic-logfire.md)
- [HoneyHive vs Respan API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-respan.md)
- [HoneyHive vs W&B Weave](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-wandb-weave.md)
- [DeepEval vs HoneyHive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepeval-vs-honeyhive.md)

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp