Kinde vs Helicone
Flexible authentication, user management, and feature flags
vs. Open-source LLM observability — 1-line integration via proxy
Pricing tiers
Kinde
Free
10,500 MAU included. MFA, B2B orgs, custom domain, 2 custom roles, 1 webhook, 2 environments.
Free
Pro
Unlimited webhooks, roles, feature flags, API keys. Remove Kinde branding. SOC 2 attestation.
$25/mo
Plus
Unlimited enterprise SSO, API scopes, org-owned M2M apps, 6 environments.
$75/mo
Scale
11 environments, custom domain per org, SCIM, MFA triggers, 30-day audit logs.
$250/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Dedicated infra option, volume discounts, custom SLAs.
Custom
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
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Kinde vs hobby on Helicone.
| Metric | Kinde | Helicone |
|---|---|---|
| custom roles | 2 roles | — |
| environments | 2 envs | — |
| feature flags | 10 flags | — |
| mau included | 10500 users/month | — |
| webhooks | 1 webhooks | — |
Features
Kinde · 14 features
- API Scopes — OAuth scopes for your APIs, enforced server-side (Plus+).
- B2B Organizations — Multi-tenant orgs with user roles, invitations, feature flags per org.
- Custom Domain — Host auth at auth.yourbrand.com. Free tier includes this.
- Enterprise SSO — SAML 2.0 + OIDC enterprise connections (Plus unlimited).
- Feature Flags — Built-in feature flags with per-user/org overrides. No separate service needed.
- Kinde AI — AI-assisted query and insights over your Kinde data.
- Kinde Billing (preview) — Built-in subscription billing linked to users/orgs. Stripe under the hood.
- Machine-to-Machine — Client credentials grant for service-to-service auth.
- Multi-Factor Auth — TOTP authenticator apps, SMS, email, passkey.
- Passwordless — Email code + passkey (WebAuthn).
- Roles & Permissions — RBAC with roles → permissions. Assigned per user or per organization.
- SCIM Provisioning — Directory provisioning from IdPs (Scale tier).
- Sign-in Widget — Hosted pages + themeable widget for login/signup. Customizable with CSS.
- Webhooks — Event webhooks: user.created/updated, organization events, MFA, etc.
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.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Kinde | Helicone |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | — | Helicone CLI |
| SDK | Kinde Android / Kotlin, Kinde Flutter SDK, Kinde Go SDK, Kinde iOS / Swift, @kinde-oss/kinde-auth-nextjs, @kinde-oss/kinde-auth-react, @kinde-oss/kinde-nodejs-sdk, Kinde Python SDK | helicone (npm), helicone-python |
| REST | Kinde Management API | Async Logging API, Helicone Proxy, Query API (HQL) |
| MCP | Kinde MCP | — |
| OTHER | — | Helicone Dashboard, Webhooks |
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