LangChain vs Helicone

LangChain

Helicone

LangChain · 18 features

• Agents — Tool-using agents with reasoning loops.
• Chains (LCEL) — LangChain Expression Language — pipe primitives into chains.
• Checkpointers (LangGraph) — Persist agent state to SQL, Mongo, Redis, Postgres.
• Document Loaders — 150+ loaders for PDF, HTML, Notion, Google Drive, S3, GitHub, etc.
• Human-in-the-loop — Pause agent for approval, then resume.
• LangGraph — Stateful graph-based agent runtime. Durable, replayable, human-in-the-loop.
• LangGraph Platform — Managed hosting for LangGraph agents with state persistence.
• LangGraph Studio — Desktop IDE for debugging agent graphs.
• LangServe — Deploy chains as FastAPI endpoints.
• Memory — Buffer, summary, entity, vector memory stores.
• Output Parsers — Structured JSON, Pydantic schemas, function calling.
• Prompt Templates — Templating + partial filling + output parsers.
• RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) — Standard patterns + 50+ retrievers.
• Streaming — First-class streaming at every layer.
• Subgraphs — Compose agent graphs hierarchically.
• Text Splitters — Recursive, token, semantic splitters for chunking.
• Tools — 400+ pre-built tools (web search, code, databases, APIs).
• Vector Store Integrations — 60+ vector DBs (Pinecone, Chroma, Weaviate, PGVector, Qdrant, Milvus).

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.