# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-langfuse.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-langfuse.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

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.

- HoneyHive: grade C, 55.9/100, rank #310 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/honeyhive.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/honeyhive.json
- Langfuse API + MCP: grade BB, 72.8/100, rank #66 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/langfuse.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/langfuse.json

## Which one, for what

Pick HoneyHive for nothing in particular (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

| Category | Weight | HoneyHive | Langfuse API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 44 | 80 | Langfuse API + MCP +36 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 86 | 93 | Langfuse API + MCP +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 74 | Langfuse API + MCP +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 61 | 65 | Langfuse API + MCP +4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | Langfuse API + MCP +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 77 | 88 | Langfuse API + MCP +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 87 | Langfuse API + MCP +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **55.9 · C** | **72.8 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | HoneyHive | Langfuse API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | HoneyHive | Langfuse (ClickHouse) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.dp1.us.honeyhive.ai` | `https://cloud.langfuse.com/api/public` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (SDK, CLI and OpenAPI specs only, platform closed source) | MIT (core), commercial licence for the ee directories |
| Tools exposed | none | 89 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | 60 npm/wk, 2.1k PyPI/wk | 35k stars, 3M npm/wk, 5.9M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (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

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