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Head to head · Obs traces · October 2026 research run

HoneyHive vs Respan API + MCP

Respan API + MCP has a score of 65.9 (B) against HoneyHive's 55.9 (C). Both do obs traces. The largest gap is reliability, 29 points.

HoneyHiveHoneyHive · HTTP API C55.9/100#310 of 452 Respan API + MCPRespan (formerly Keywords AI) · HTTP API B65.9/100#165 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick HoneyHive for

  • transparency & trust (+7)

Pick Respan API + MCP for

  • reliability (+29)
  • security & auth (+5)
  • payments & pricing (+10)
  • maintenance & community (+8)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHoneyHiveRespan API + MCPEdge
Reliability16%204473Respan API + MCP +29
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28689Respan API + MCP +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.26366Respan API + MCP +3
Security & auth14%17.56166Respan API + MCP +5
Payments & pricing10%12.52030Respan API + MCP +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87785Respan API + MCP +8
Transparency & trust7%8.86861HoneyHive +7
Negative events≤15-3-2
Total55.9 · C65.9 · B

Facts side by side

FactHoneyHiveRespan API + MCP
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorHoneyHiveRespan (formerly Keywords AI)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.dp1.us.honeyhive.aihttps://api.respan.ai/api
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMIT (SDK, CLI and OpenAPI specs only, platform closed source)Apache-2.0 (SDKs only, platform closed source)
Tools exposednone67
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 release2026-09-292026-09-30
Popularity60 npm/wk, 2.1k PyPI/wk270 npm/wk, 13k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews2.5/5 (2)2.5/5 (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.

Respan API + MCP

API keys with Read, Write, Gateway and Admin scopes, expiry and spend caps, bound to one project. 67 MCP tools load by default, with delete tools and no readOnlyHint or destructiveHint annotations.

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

Respan API + MCP

  1. Create a key with only the Read scope for agents that analyse logs. New keys get Read, Write and Gateway by default
  2. Set Respan-Enabled-Tools to a short list such as list_traces,get_trace_tree,list_logs. All 67 tools load otherwise
  3. Pass filters to list_logs rather than paging through everything. The default window is the last hour
  4. Call list_organizations first when results look empty over OAuth. Every tool acts on the active organisation only
  5. Append .md to any docs URL for clean Markdown

Other comparisons with HoneyHive or Respan API + MCP

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