# Braintrust API + MCP vs HoneyHive

> Braintrust API + MCP has a score of 61.3 (C) against HoneyHive's 55.9 (C). Both do obs traces. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 20 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Braintrust API + MCP has a score of 61.3 (C) against HoneyHive's 55.9 (C). Both do obs traces. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 20 points.

- Braintrust API + MCP: grade C, 61.3/100, rank #229 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/braintrust.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/braintrust.json
- HoneyHive: grade C, 55.9/100, rank #310 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/honeyhive.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/honeyhive.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Braintrust API + MCP for reliability (+17), payments & pricing (+20), maintenance & community (+8).

Pick HoneyHive for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Braintrust API + MCP | HoneyHive | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 61 | 44 | Braintrust API + MCP +17 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 86 | HoneyHive +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 63 | Braintrust API + MCP +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 61 | HoneyHive +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 20 | Braintrust API + MCP +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 77 | Braintrust API + MCP +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 68 | even |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **61.3 · C** | **55.9 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Braintrust API + MCP | HoneyHive |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Braintrust | HoneyHive |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.braintrust.dev/v1` | `https://api.dp1.us.honeyhive.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs only, platform closed source) | MIT (SDK, CLI and OpenAPI specs only, platform closed source) |
| Tools exposed | 42 | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.braintrustdata/braintrust` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-29 |
| Popularity | 2M npm/wk, 1.7M PyPI/wk | 60 npm/wk, 2.1k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Braintrust API + MCP.** OpenAPI 3.0.3 spec with 75 paths, 429 and `Retry-After` declared on 154 operations. Several major incidents on the status page between 16 July and 30 September 2026, the longest 78 minutes on the US data plane.

**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

### Braintrust API + MCP

1. Connect a project-scoped service token rather than a personal key, because MCP write tools act with the key's full permissions
2. Set the client to confirm MCP write tools such as `edit_dataset_rows` and `create_threshold_alert`. The server has no read-only mode
3. Cache `sql_query` results. Starter and Pro allow about 20 queries a minute and return 429
4. Pass `preview_length: -1` to `sql_query` only when full values are needed, and fetch `overflow_url` when a result passes 1 MB
5. Upgrade to Python `braintrust` 0.28.0 or TypeScript 3.23.1 or later and rotate any provider keys traced before July 2026

### 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

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