# HoneyHive vs LangSmith API + MCP

> LangSmith API + MCP has a score of 71.3 (BB) against HoneyHive's 55.9 (C). Both do obs traces. The largest gap is reliability, 37 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

LangSmith API + MCP has a score of 71.3 (BB) against HoneyHive's 55.9 (C). Both do obs traces. The largest gap is reliability, 37 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
- LangSmith API + MCP: grade BB, 71.3/100, rank #85 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/langsmith.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/langsmith.json

## Which one, for what

Pick HoneyHive for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick LangSmith API + MCP for reliability (+37), agent ergonomics (+13), security & auth (+16), payments & pricing (+20), maintenance & community (+8), transparency & trust (+10).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | HoneyHive | LangSmith API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 44 | 81 | LangSmith API + MCP +37 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 86 | 86 | even |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 76 | LangSmith API + MCP +13 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 61 | 77 | LangSmith API + MCP +16 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 40 | LangSmith API + MCP +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 77 | 85 | LangSmith API + MCP +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 78 | LangSmith API + MCP +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **55.9 · C** | **71.3 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | HoneyHive | LangSmith API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | HoneyHive | LangChain |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.dp1.us.honeyhive.ai` | `https://api.smith.langchain.com` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (SDK, CLI and OpenAPI specs only, platform closed source) | MIT (SDK only, platform closed source) |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| 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 | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | 60 npm/wk, 2.1k PyPI/wk | 1.1k stars, 7.6M npm/wk, 17.8M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (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.

**LangSmith API + MCP.** Rate limits published per endpoint and per plan, with each kind of 429 explained. Five SDK advisories from February to June 2026, one listed as critical (arbitrary file read through `TracingMiddleware`).

## 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

### LangSmith API + MCP

1. Batch run reads. `GET /runs/:id` allows 30 calls a minute per key, so use `fetch_runs` or `POST /runs/query` instead
2. Pass `trace_id` or `min_start_time` to `fetch_runs` and keep `limit` low. Results page by a 25,000-character budget
3. Don't call `create_dataset` or `run_experiment` over MCP to make changes. They return how-to text, not results
4. Send `X-Api-Key` and point at the regional host (eu., apac. or aws.api.smith.langchain.com) that matches the workspace
5. Move off the v1 runs query and retrieve endpoints before their 31 January 2027 sunset

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