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

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-respan
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-respan.md (~1,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-respan.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/honeyhive-vs-respan.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

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.

- 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
- Respan API + MCP: grade B, 65.9/100, rank #165 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/respan.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/respan.json

## 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

| Category | Weight | HoneyHive | Respan API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 44 | 73 | Respan API + MCP +29 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 86 | 89 | Respan API + MCP +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 66 | Respan API + MCP +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 61 | 66 | Respan API + MCP +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 30 | Respan API + MCP +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 77 | 85 | Respan API + MCP +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 61 | HoneyHive +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **55.9 · C** | **65.9 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | HoneyHive | Respan API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | HoneyHive | Respan (formerly Keywords AI) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.dp1.us.honeyhive.ai` | `https://api.respan.ai/api` |
| 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) | Apache-2.0 (SDKs only, platform closed source) |
| Tools exposed | none | 67 |
| 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 | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | 60 npm/wk, 2.1k PyPI/wk | 270 npm/wk, 13k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (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

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