Staxly

Helicone vs CircleCI

Open-source LLM observability — 1-line integration via proxy
vs. Fast, configurable CI/CD with Docker, ARM, GPU runners and orbs

Helicone websiteCircleCI website

Pricing tiers

Helicone

Hobby (Free)
10,000 requests/month. 7-day retention. 1 seat. Basic monitoring.
Free
Startup Discount
<2 years, <$5M funding: 50% off first year.
$0 base (usage-based)
Self-Hosted (OSS)
MIT-licensed. Run Helicone yourself for free.
$0 base (usage-based)
Pro
$79/month. 10k free + usage-based. Unlimited seats. Alerts, reports, HQL query language. 1-month retention.
$79/mo
Team
$799/month. 5 orgs, SOC-2 + HIPAA compliance, dedicated Slack, 3-month retention.
$799/mo
Enterprise
Custom MSA, SAML SSO, on-prem deploy, bulk discounts, forever retention.
Custom
Helicone website

CircleCI

Free
$0. 6,000 build minutes/mo (Linux medium). 30 users. Unlimited projects.
Free
Performance
$15/mo (3 users). Credit-based: 80K-240K credits/mo bundles. More concurrency.
$15/mo
Scale
$2,000/mo+ (custom). High concurrency, self-hosted runner support, SSO.
$2000/mo
CircleCI Server
Custom. On-prem deployment of CircleCI. Enterprise only.
Custom
CircleCI website

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing hobby on Helicone vs free on CircleCI.

MetricHeliconeCircleCI
No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers.

Features

Helicone · 16 features

  • AlertsThresholds on error rate, latency, cost, usage. Pro+.
  • Async LoggingLog AFTER the LLM call via SDK — zero added latency.
  • Cost TrackingAutomatic cost calculation per call by provider/model.
  • DashboardRequest tables, aggregate metrics, cost breakdowns.
  • EvaluatorsLLM-as-judge + custom evaluators on runs.
  • ExperimentsA/B test different models/prompts.
  • HQL (SQL over traces)Query your logged data with SQL. Pro+.
  • PII RedactionAutomatically scrub emails, credit cards, etc. from logs.
  • Prompt CachingCache identical requests → save money.
  • Prompts & VersionsStore + version + A/B test prompts.
  • Proxy Mode1-line integration via base URL swap. Captures all requests.
  • Rate LimitingPer-user + per-key rate limit policies.
  • ReportsScheduled email reports with KPIs.
  • Self-HostingDocker + k8s deployment.
  • SessionsGroup related calls (chat sessions, agent runs).
  • User MetricsPer-user cost + usage segmentation.

CircleCI · 17 features

  • ARM + GPU RunnersARM64 + T4 GPU resource classes.
  • .circleci/config.ymlSingle source of truth (YAML 2.1).
  • ContextsOrg-scoped shared env vars.
  • Deploy MarkersTrack deployments + rollback.
  • Docker Layer CachingReuse Docker layers.
  • Dynamic ConfigGenerate config based on changed paths.
  • Manual ApprovalGate workflows with manual step.
  • Matrix JobsParameterized parallel jobs.
  • OrbsPackaged reusable jobs + commands.
  • ParallelismSplit a job across N parallel containers.
  • Rerun with SSHSSH into failed job.
  • Restricted ContextsRBAC for secrets.
  • Scheduled PipelinesCron-triggered runs.
  • Self-Hosted RunnersOn your infra.
  • Test InsightsFlaky test detection + trends.
  • Test SplittingBy timings, filenames, classnames.
  • Workflows (DAG)Fan out, fan in, conditional.

Developer interfaces

KindHeliconeCircleCI
CLIHelicone CLIcircleci CLI
SDKhelicone (npm), helicone-python
RESTAsync Logging API, Helicone Proxy, Query API (HQL)CircleCI REST API v2
OTHERHelicone Dashboard, Webhooks.circleci/config.yml, CircleCI Orbs Registry, CircleCI Webhooks, CircleCI Web UI, Self-Hosted Runner
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Helicone and CircleCI are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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