Every category where a model named Helicone for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
LLM gateways and observability	Data platform	9%	3 of 63	13%	30	accepted challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Helicone yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Helicone across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	1	0	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	2	0	0	2
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	1	0	0	1
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	1	0	1
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	2	2	0	4
Mistral Small	3	0	0	0	3
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	1	2	3
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	2	0	3
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	2	1	4
Kimi K2	0	3	0	0	3
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	1	1	1	3
MiniMax M2.5	1	0	1	0	2

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct14 labels5

Paraphrase22 labels3

Comparative21 labelsNone

Budget-constrained9 labels2

Scale-constrained6 labelsNone

Negative7 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative79 labels in all, every segment counted; 10 of the 11 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“LiteLLM (for flexibility and cost control) or Helicone (for observability and ease of use) are the best LLM gateway choices” Mistral Small · LLM gateways · direct prompt · first choice

“Portkey and Helicone are the most frequently recommended LLM observability and routing platforms” Mistral Small · LLM gateways · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“LiteLLM (self-hosted, free) and Helicone (free tier, low-cost Pro plan) are the top picks” Mistral Small · LLM gateways · budget prompt · first choice

“Start with Langfuse or Helicone” MiniMax M2.5 · LLM gateways · paraphrase prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Avoid depending on Helicone — it's now in maintenance mode” DeepSeek V4 Flash · LLM gateways · budget prompt · hard negative

“Avoid if you need active development.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · LLM gateways · negative prompt · hard negative

“Some sources note Helicone's roadmap/maintenance has been evolving; if stability matters, bias toward Portkey or Braintrust.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · LLM gateways · paraphrase prompt · soft negative

“Their cloud plan starts around $79/month, which may be too high for very tight budgets, but the OSS version is robust.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · LLM gateways · budget prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Helicone, over the 79 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Helicone was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

LiteLLM62 of 7925Compare →

Portkey62 of 7918Compare →

OpenRouter48 of 7912Not in the top three

Cloudflare AI Gateway32 of 791Not in the top three

Bifrost23 of 796Not in the top three

Kong AI Gateway20 of 792Not in the top three

Langfuse19 of 796Not in the top three

Braintrust Gateway13 of 792Not in the top three

Braintrust10 of 790Not in the top three

LangSmith10 of 790Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Helicone. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 75 of the 79 answers that named Helicone and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

braintrust.dev42

truefoundry.com39

dataiku.com37

respan.ai37

cloudzero.com34

dev.to33

getmaxim.ai33

orq.ai29

techsy.io26

helicone.ai20

330 of the 330 domain citations in answers naming Helicone came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

dataiku.com/blog/best-llm-gateways37

cloudzero.com/blog/llm-gateways34

orq.ai/blog/best-llm-gateways28

respan.ai/articles/best-llm-gateways28

techsy.io/en/blog/best-llm-gateway-tools26

truefoundry.com/blog/best-llm-gateways26

braintrust.dev/articles/best-llm-gateways-202625

getmaxim.ai/articles/top-5-llm-gateways-in-2026-a-production-ready-comparison17

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Helicone's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Helicone, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at helicone.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.