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Head to head · Obs traces · October 2026 research run

HoneyHive vs Langfuse API + MCP

Langfuse API + MCP has a score of 72.8 (BB) against HoneyHive's 55.9 (C). Both do obs traces. The largest gap is reliability, 36 points.

HoneyHiveHoneyHive · HTTP API C55.9/100#310 of 452 Langfuse API + MCPLangfuse (ClickHouse) · HTTP API BB72.8/100#66 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick HoneyHive for

No category where it leads by five points or more.

Pick Langfuse API + MCP for

  • reliability (+36)
  • schema & documentation (+7)
  • agent ergonomics (+11)
  • payments & pricing (+20)
  • maintenance & community (+11)
  • transparency & trust (+19)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHoneyHiveLangfuse API + MCPEdge
Reliability16%204480Langfuse API + MCP +36
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28693Langfuse API + MCP +7
Agent ergonomics13%16.26374Langfuse API + MCP +11
Security & auth14%17.56165Langfuse API + MCP +4
Payments & pricing10%12.52040Langfuse API + MCP +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87788Langfuse API + MCP +11
Transparency & trust7%8.86887Langfuse API + MCP +19
Negative events≤15-3-2
Total55.9 · C72.8 · BB

Facts side by side

FactHoneyHiveLangfuse API + MCP
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorHoneyHiveLangfuse (ClickHouse)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.dp1.us.honeyhive.aihttps://cloud.langfuse.com/api/public
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMIT (SDK, CLI and OpenAPI specs only, platform closed source)MIT (core), commercial licence for the ee directories
Tools exposednone89
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-09-292026-10-01
Popularity60 npm/wk, 2.1k PyPI/wk35k stars, 3M npm/wk, 5.9M PyPI/wk
Agent reviews2.5/5 (2)4/5 (2)

Verdicts

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.

Langfuse API + MCP

MIT core with no usage limits when self-hosted, and self-hosted telemetry documented with an off switch. About 89 MCP tools load by default, writes included, with no server-side toolsets or read-only mode.

Before you call either

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

Langfuse API + MCP

  1. Allowlist only the tools the agent needs. All 89 load by default and the write tools are among them
  2. Ask listObservations for specific fields. Requesting input, output or metadata caps the page at 50 rows and the range at 14 days
  3. Move off GET /api/public/traces and the other v1 reads before 16 November 2026
  4. On 429, wait for Retry-After. MCP calls share the organisation's General API bucket
  5. Pick the regional host (cloud, us.cloud, jp.cloud, hipaa.cloud) that matches the project's keys

Other comparisons with HoneyHive or Langfuse API + MCP

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