# Gauge CLI vs HoneyHive

> Gauge CLI scores 60.4 (C) to HoneyHive's 51.8 (D) for evaluations. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gauge-cli-vs-honeyhive
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gauge-cli-vs-honeyhive.md (~4,550 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: 2026-11-06

Gauge CLI scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against HoneyHive's 51.8 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. HoneyHive leads on schema & documentation, security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do evaluations.

- Gauge CLI: grade C, 60.4/100, rank #590 of 1354. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/gauge-cli.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/gauge-cli.json
- HoneyHive: grade D, 51.8/100, rank #907 of 1354. 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 250 evals comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-observability/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Gauge CLI (C)

Good for: Teams that build skills, CLIs, SDKs or MCP servers and want to see where coding agents get stuck with them, and to test fixes before release.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 60 against 39
- Agent ergonomics, 75 against 63
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 82 against 77

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
- No incidents deducted, where HoneyHive loses 6 points for them

Watch for: Collects anonymous command usage by default, with an opt-out

### HoneyHive (D)

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:
- Schema & documentation, 86 against 60
- Security & auth, 61 against 55
- Transparency & trust, 67 against 53

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: Status page showed its single component in Downtime with 0.000 per cent uptime on 4 November 2026, with no incident history


## Why the edge

### Schema & documentation: HoneyHive +26

- Gauge CLI (60): CLI reading. No machine-readable contract, -o json on read commands (10 of 25). No llms.txt; instructions bundled in the CLI for agents (5). The README says what it finds and when local or hosted fits (16 of 20). Commands with help text; typed flags (9 of 15). Worked examples, no error reference (8 of 15). Dated changelog and semver tags (12 of 15). 10 + 5 + 16 + 9 + 8 + 12 = 60.
- HoneyHive (86): Two public OpenAPI 3.1 specs in an MIT repository, version 1.17.0 on 4 November 2026, data plane with 69 paths and 108 operations and control plane with 10 paths and 17 operations (25). llms.txt with every page as Markdown (10). All but 3 operations have a description, deprecated operations are flagged (57 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: Gauge CLI +21

- Gauge CLI (60): Local package. Installs from npm as @withgauge/cli with Node 22.13 or later and Docker stated (20). checks.yml runs npm run check on push and pull request across a matrix, and the repository has 76 test files; whether main passes wasn't read (20 of 25). Issues weren't read (5, unchecked). A dated changelog with Added sections per release (15). Version 0.28.0 (0). 20 + 20 + 5 + 15 + 0 = 60.
- HoneyHive (39): 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). On 4 November 2026 the page showed "Some services are down", Backend Platform in Downtime and uptime figures of 0.000, 14.836 and 43.447 per cent, with no incident write-ups readable (its /history path redirects to the page itself). We can't tell whether the monitor watches a retired host, but the vendor's own page shows the figures, 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 lists an uptime SLA with service credits, but no SLA document is published, so 0 under this run's reading. API, SDKs and CLI are GA (10).

### Payments & pricing: Gauge CLI +20

- Gauge CLI (40): Scored on the hosted option. No payment protocol (0). Credit prices weren't found on the pages read (0). Local mode is free with no card (20). Local mode needs no sign-up (20). 0 + 0 + 20 + 20 = 40.
- 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).

### Transparency & trust: HoneyHive +14

- Gauge CLI (53): MIT (30). Local data stays in .gauge/ and telemetry fields are listed; hosted data handling wasn't read (18 of 30). Dated changelog, no deprecation policy (10 of 20). Telemetry on by default, disclosed with an opt-out (20). 30 + 18 + 10 + 20 = 78.
- HoneyHive (67): Closed platform. The Python SDK, CLI and OpenAPI specs are MIT (18). The privacy policy (11 January 2025) covers platform data, defers retention to the pricing page (30 days on Free), names AWS and Stripe and uses standard contractual clauses for EU transfers, per the 1 October check. Self-hosted data-flow docs exist and a DPA is custom on Enterprise (14). 57 operations marked deprecated in the spec, and dated changelog notices for charts (5 October), datasets and datapoints (14 and 21 October) and experiment runs (27 October) that say the old endpoints keep working for now, with no end date. Against that, the v2.0.0 spec of 8 May removed `GET /events` and nine other operations without deprecation, per its own oasdiff changelog (14). AWS hosting and US transfer stated, no full subprocessor list. The Python SDK sends no usage data of its own, and the TypeScript SDK's PostHog client is commented out (8).

### Agent ergonomics: Gauge CLI +12

- Gauge CLI (75): CLI reading for an agent driving it. Bundled instructions match the installed version, and output is filterable with -o json (20 of 25). Run summaries and Findings with queryable fields (15 of 20). Errors not documented as a reference (10 of 20). Reruns from checkpoints and a recheck command with a confirm step (15 of 20). Four commands to start, Node only (15 of 15). 20 + 15 + 10 + 15 + 15 = 75.
- 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 +6

- Gauge CLI (55): Local tool. Agent credentials stay on your machine in local mode; hosted login with a device flow (20 of 30). Test agents run in fresh Docker sessions with injected inputs, and the gateway brokers credentials in hosted mode (12 of 20). Agents under test read your product's docs and outputs, with no prompt-injection guidance (5 of 15). Local transcripts and SQLite evidence per run (10 of 15). No security policy found (8 of 20). 20 + 12 + 5 + 10 + 8 = 55.
- HoneyHive (61): Five 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, and fine-grained data plane keys (`hh_fgdp_`) since 5 October. 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 | Gauge CLI | HoneyHive | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 39 | Gauge CLI +21 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 86 | HoneyHive +26 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 63 | Gauge CLI +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 61 | HoneyHive +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 20 | Gauge CLI +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 77 | Gauge CLI +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 53 | 67 | HoneyHive +14 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -6 | |
| **Total** | | **60.4 · C** | **51.8 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Gauge CLI | HoneyHive |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | cli | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Gauge | HoneyHive |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.dp1.us.honeyhive.ai` |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | MIT (SDK, CLI and OpenAPI specs only, platform closed source) |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-30 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2025-01-06 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2025-01-11 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | yes |
| Popularity | none | 60 npm/wk, 2.1k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### Gauge CLI

No score change since it was listed.

### HoneyHive

- -4.0 on 4 November 2026 (C to D): security, correction
- +0.1 on 28 October 2026: new evidence
- -0.2 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**Gauge CLI.** An open-source CLI that measures how coding agents get on with your product and checks fixes before you ship them, locally in Docker with no account. It's young and pre-1.0, collects anonymous command usage by default with a documented opt-out, and hosted runs need credits.

**HoneyHive.** Read-only, ingestion-only and fine-grained API keys, public OpenAPI specs and weekly dated changelogs. The status page showed its single component down on 4 November 2026 with no incident history, and the platform changed error codes and fixed a permission check without advance notice or an advisory.

## Before you call either

### Gauge CLI

1. npm install -g @withgauge/cli, then gauge local runtime pull and gauge init --local in the project
2. Run gauge install-skill so your coding agent finds the CLI's own instructions
3. Set GAUGE_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 in CI if you don't want command usage collected
4. Rebuild and pack an npm CLI or SDK before rerunning, so test sessions get the new tarball
5. Keep .gauge/ private; it holds measurements and analyses

### 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 or a missing permission before assuming the record is missing
3. Call the project-scoped `/v1/projects/{project_id}/...` routes with a data plane key. The unscoped routes are deprecated
4. Set `limit` on `POST /v1/events/search`. The default is 1,000 rows
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, Gauge CLI or HoneyHive?

Gauge CLI scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against HoneyHive's 51.8 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. HoneyHive leads on schema & documentation, security & auth and transparency & trust.

### Can an agent call Gauge CLI and HoneyHive without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Gauge CLI. HoneyHive has a hosted endpoint at https://api.dp1.us.honeyhive.ai.

### Are Gauge CLI and HoneyHive open source?

Gauge CLI is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for HoneyHive.


## For agents

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

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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