Staxly

Vercel vs Helicone

Frontend cloud for Next.js and modern web frameworks
vs. Open-source LLM observability — 1-line integration via proxy

Vercel website ↗Helicone website ↗

Pricing tiers

Vercel

Hobby (Free)
Free forever. 100 GB bandwidth, 1M functions, 360 GB-hrs memory, 1M edge requests. 1 developer. Hard caps.
Free
Pro
$20/user/month. 1 TB bandwidth, pay-as-you-go overages. Team seats, concurrent builds.
$20/mo
Enterprise
Custom pricing. SLA, SSO, audit logs, dedicated support.
Custom
Vercel website ↗

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 ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing hobby on Vercel vs hobby on Helicone.

MetricVercelHelicone
bandwidth gb month100 GB/month—
edge requests1000000 requests/month—
function invocations1000000 invocations/month—
memory gb hrs360 GB-hrs/month—
team members1 users—

Features

Vercel · 15 features

  • Cron Jobs — Scheduled serverless functions. JSON config in vercel.json.
  • Edge Functions — V8-isolate serverless functions at edge locations. Lower cold start than Lambda.
  • Edge Middleware — Intercept requests at edge before hitting origin — auth, routing, A/B tests.
  • Git-based Deploys — Auto-deploy from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket on every push. Preview URLs for every…
  • Image Optimization — On-the-fly resize, format conversion (AVIF, WebP), CDN caching.
  • Incremental Static Regeneration — Re-generate static pages on-demand or via revalidate. Next.js-native.
  • Log Drains — Stream logs to Datadog, Axiom, Logtail, HTTP endpoints.
  • Preview Deployments — Unique URL per Git branch/PR. Password-protect or share. Infinite.
  • Serverless Functions — Node.js, Python, Go. AWS Lambda under the hood. Up to 15 min duration.
  • Speed Insights — Real User Monitoring. FCP, LCP, CLS, INP per page.
  • Vercel Blob — Managed object storage (S3-compatible API).
  • Vercel KV (Redis) — Managed Redis via Upstash. Edge-accessible.
  • Vercel Marketplace — One-click integrations: Supabase, Clerk, Sentry, PostHog, Resend, 100+ services.
  • Vercel Postgres — Managed Neon Postgres. Edge-accessible with @vercel/postgres.
  • Web Analytics — Privacy-friendly web analytics. Core Web Vitals, visitors, pages.

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

KindVercelHelicone
CLIVercel CLIHelicone CLI
SDK@vercel/clienthelicone (npm), helicone-python
RESTVercel REST APIAsync Logging API, Helicone Proxy, Query API (HQL)
MCPVercel MCP—
OTHEREdge Runtime BindingsHelicone Dashboard, Webhooks
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Vercel and Helicone are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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