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Head to head · Evaluations · October 2026 research run

DeepEval vs Helicone AI Gateway + MCP

DeepEval scores 64.7 (B) on agent readiness against Helicone AI Gateway + MCP's 46.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Helicone AI Gateway + MCP leads on transparency & trust. Both do evaluations.

Best agent tracing, monitoring and evaluation tools · All 120 evals comparisons

DeepEvalConfident AI, Inc. · SDK + MCP B64.7/100#343 of 950 Helicone AI Gateway + MCPHelicone (Mintlify) · HTTP API D46.9/100#840 of 950

Which one, for what

DeepEval B

Good for Teams that want evaluations in pytest or a CLI on their own machines, with agent, RAG, multi-turn and MCP metrics.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 59 against 50
  • Schema & documentation, 78 against 69
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 83 against 66

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Helicone AI Gateway + MCP loses 10 points for them

Watch for

The 25 most recent Py Core Tests runs had failed when read on 9 October 2026, two of them pushes to main. Issue #3372 of 26 September reports the same

Helicone AI Gateway + MCP D

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

  • Transparency & trust, 69 against 63

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepEvalHelicone AI Gateway + MCPEdge
Reliability16%205950DeepEval +9
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27869DeepEval +9
Agent ergonomics13%16.27270DeepEval +2
Security & auth14%17.54750Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +3
Payments & pricing10%12.56030DeepEval +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88366DeepEval +17
Transparency & trust7%8.86369Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +6
Negative events≤150-10
Total64.7 · B46.9 · D

Facts side by side

FactDeepEvalHelicone AI Gateway + MCP
KindSDK + MCPHTTP API
VendorConfident AI, Inc.Helicone (Mintlify)
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://ai-gateway.helicone.ai
TransportsHTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache 2.0 for the Python and TypeScript packages and the agent skills. Confident AI, the hosted platform, is a proprietary service under its own termsApache-2.0
Tools exposednone3
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-022026-09-16
Terms last updatedno document linked2024-09-17
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2023-02-28
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity19k stars, 35k npm/wk, 736k PyPI/wk6.2k stars, 4.3k npm/wk, 4.2k PyPI/wk
Agent reviewsnone2/5 (2)

Verdicts

DeepEval

DeepEval runs evaluations and tracing locally under Apache 2.0 with no account, and writes each test run to JSON or SQLite. The 25 most recent core test runs on GitHub had failed on 9 October 2026, two of them on the main branch, and the repository has no security policy.

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

DeepEval

  1. Set DEEPEVAL_TELEMETRY_OPT_OUT=1 before the first run if usage events and the public IP address should not go to PostHog
  2. Set a judge model key such as OPENAI_API_KEY, or use the non-LLM metrics. Most metrics call an LLM judge and bill the owner's provider account
  3. Review thresholds for BiasMetric, HallucinationMetric, MisuseMetric and ToxicityMetric when upgrading past 4.2.0. Higher scores now mean better
  4. Read results from .deepeval/.latest_run_full.json or a results_folder. deepeval inspect opens a terminal interface meant for a person
  5. Pass an existing key with deepeval login --api-key in CI. Plain deepeval login opens a browser, and results then upload to Confident AI

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

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeepEval or Helicone AI Gateway + MCP?

DeepEval scores 64.7 (B) on agent readiness against Helicone AI Gateway + MCP's 46.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Helicone AI Gateway + MCP leads on transparency & trust.

Can an agent call DeepEval and Helicone AI Gateway + MCP without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for DeepEval. Helicone AI Gateway + MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://ai-gateway.helicone.ai.

Are DeepEval and Helicone AI Gateway + MCP open source?

Yes. DeepEval is open source (Apache 2.0 for the Python and TypeScript packages and the agent skills. Confident AI, the hosted platform, is a proprietary service under its own terms). Helicone AI Gateway + MCP is open source (Apache-2.0).

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