Helicone vs Fastly
Open-source LLM observability — 1-line integration via proxy
vs. Edge cloud platform — CDN + compute + security + observability
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
Fastly
Free Trial
Free allowances: 100 GB bandwidth, 1M CDN requests, 10M Edge Compute requests, 100M vCPU-ms, 500K DDoS requests.
Free
Pay-as-you-go
Usage-based rates with volume discounts. No minimum commitment.
$0 base (usage-based)
Basic Package
$1,500/month. 100M requests. Standard support.
$1500/mo
Starter Package
$6,000/month. 500M requests. Gold support.
$6000/mo
Advantage
Custom. 2B requests. Gold support.
Custom
Ultimate
Custom. 5B+ requests. Enterprise support.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing hobby on Helicone vs free on Fastly.
| Metric | Helicone | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Helicone · 16 features
- Alerts — Thresholds on error rate, latency, cost, usage. Pro+.
- Async Logging — Log AFTER the LLM call via SDK — zero added latency.
- Cost Tracking — Automatic cost calculation per call by provider/model.
- Dashboard — Request tables, aggregate metrics, cost breakdowns.
- Evaluators — LLM-as-judge + custom evaluators on runs.
- Experiments — A/B test different models/prompts.
- HQL (SQL over traces) — Query your logged data with SQL. Pro+.
- PII Redaction — Automatically scrub emails, credit cards, etc. from logs.
- Prompt Caching — Cache identical requests → save money.
- Prompts & Versions — Store + version + A/B test prompts.
- Proxy Mode — 1-line integration via base URL swap. Captures all requests.
- Rate Limiting — Per-user + per-key rate limit policies.
- Reports — Scheduled email reports with KPIs.
- Self-Hosting — Docker + k8s deployment.
- Sessions — Group related calls (chat sessions, agent runs).
- User Metrics — Per-user cost + usage segmentation.
Fastly · 16 features
- API Security — Schema validation + rate limiting.
- Bot Management — Behavioral bot detection + mitigation.
- CDN — Global Varnish-based CDN with VCL customization.
- Compute@Edge — Wasm-based serverless at 200+ POPs. Rust, JS, Go.
- DDoS Protection — Included on all plans.
- Fanout (WebSockets) — Persistent connection fan-out at edge.
- Image Optimization — On-the-fly resize/format/quality.
- Instant Purge — <150ms global cache invalidation.
- KV Store (Config) — Edge key-value store for config.
- Live Streaming — HLS + DASH live video delivery.
- Log Streaming — Real-time logs to S3, Datadog, Splunk, Azure, GCS, Kafka.
- Managed TLS — Automated cert issuance + renewal.
- Next-Gen WAF — Signal Sciences acquired — runtime app protection.
- Real-Time Analytics — Sub-second log streaming + metrics.
- Secret Store — Encrypted secrets at edge.
- Shield POP — Origin shield to reduce origin load.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Helicone | Fastly |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Helicone CLI | Fastly CLI |
| SDK | helicone (npm), helicone-python | compute-go-starter, compute-js-starter, compute-rust-starter |
| REST | Async Logging API, Helicone Proxy, Query API (HQL) | Fastly API |
| OTHER | Helicone Dashboard, Webhooks | Compute@Edge (Wasm), VCL (Varnish) |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Helicone and Fastly may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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