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Head to head · Obs traces · October 2026 research run

Helicone AI Gateway + MCP vs HoneyHive

HoneyHive has a score of 55.9 (C) against Helicone AI Gateway + MCP's 47.1 (D). Both do obs traces. The largest gap is schema & documentation, 17 points.

Helicone AI Gateway + MCPHelicone (Mintlify) · HTTP API D47.1/100#387 of 452 HoneyHiveHoneyHive · HTTP API C55.9/100#310 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Helicone AI Gateway + MCP for

  • reliability (+6)
  • agent ergonomics (+7)
  • payments & pricing (+10)

Pick HoneyHive for

  • schema & documentation (+17)
  • security & auth (+11)
  • maintenance & community (+11)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHelicone AI Gateway + MCPHoneyHiveEdge
Reliability16%205044Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +6
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26986HoneyHive +17
Agent ergonomics13%16.27063Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +7
Security & auth14%17.55061HoneyHive +11
Payments & pricing10%12.53020Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86677HoneyHive +11
Transparency & trust7%8.87168Helicone AI Gateway + MCP +3
Negative events≤15-10-3
Total47.1 · D55.9 · C

Facts side by side

FactHelicone AI Gateway + MCPHoneyHive
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorHelicone (Mintlify)HoneyHive
Hosted endpointhttps://ai-gateway.helicone.aihttps://api.dp1.us.honeyhive.ai
TransportsHTTP, stdioHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT (SDK, CLI and OpenAPI specs only, platform closed source)
Tools exposed3none
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-09-162026-09-29
Popularity6.2k stars, 4.3k npm/wk, 4.2k PyPI/wk60 npm/wk, 2.1k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews2/5 (2)2.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

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.

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

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

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

Other comparisons with Helicone AI Gateway + MCP or HoneyHive

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