# Helicone AI Gateway + MCP vs LangWatch (slim)

> LangWatch scores 65.5 (B) on agent readiness against Helicone AI Gateway + MCP's 46.9 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do obs traces. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/helicone-vs-langwatch.md (~2,500 tokens) · this version ~630 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/helicone-vs-langwatch.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/helicone-vs-langwatch
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

LangWatch scores 65.5 (B) on agent readiness against Helicone AI Gateway + MCP's 46.9 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do obs traces.

- Helicone AI Gateway + MCP: D 46.9, rank #746 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/helicone.min.md
- LangWatch: B 65.5, rank #291 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/langwatch.min.md
- Helicone AI Gateway + MCP, good for A team that wants request logging and cost tracking through a gateway with almost no code, and could swap it out later.
- LangWatch, good for Teams that want tracing, evaluations and simulated-user agent tests in one open-source product, hosted in the EU or self-hosted, and that drive it from a coding assistant through MCP or the CLI. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 87 against 69; Security & auth, 71 against 50; Payments & pricing, 40 against 30; Maintenance & community, 90 against 66; Transparency & trust, 75 against 69.

| Category | Helicone AI Gateway + MCP | LangWatch |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 50 | 53 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 69 | 87 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 70 | 67 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 50 | 71 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 30 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 66 | 90 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 69 | 75 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Helicone AI Gateway + MCP | LangWatch |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Helicone (Mintlify) | Reasoning Engine B.V. (LangWatch) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://ai-gateway.helicone.ai` | `https://app.langwatch.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy), stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache 2.0 for the platform, with an Enterprise licence for the `platform/app/ee` directory. The SDKs and the MCP server are MIT |
| Tools exposed | 3 | 101 |
| Last release | 2026-09-16 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | 2024-09-17 | 2026-09-22 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2023-02-28 | 2026-09-29 |
| Popularity | 6.2k stars, 4.3k npm/wk, 4.2k PyPI/wk | 4.9k stars, 50k npm/wk, 87k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | none |