Spendassay vs. Helicone
Helicone watches your LLM requests. Spendassay audits what your AI spend bought.
Helicone is an AI gateway and LLM observability platform. Developers route requests through it to log and debug their AI applications at the request and token level. It is self-serve, open source, and built for the engineers shipping the app. Mintlify acquired it in March 2026 and the product is now in maintenance mode, so anyone choosing a gateway today should read the status note below before anything else on this page. Spendassay works at a different altitude and answers to a different buyer. It is a cross-vendor audit that connects every dollar of AI spend to what teams actually ship, then hands finance a AI cost report they can forward. Instrumenting your own app and auditing the whole company's AI bill are two separate jobs, and many teams do both.
The one-line difference
Helicone measures the requests your app makes; Spendassay measures whether the money across every vendor produced shipped work.
Two jobs, often side by side
Use each for what it's built for
Reach for Helicone when…
Reach for Helicone when engineers need per-request logging, prompt debugging, caching, and latency and token metrics on the LLM app they build and operate.
Reach for Spendassay when…
Reach for Spendassay when finance or a team lead needs one neutral view of AI spend across seats, API tokens, and infra, tied to shipped output with evidence behind every number.
Side by side
Built for different questions
Status update. Helicone was acquired by Mintlify, announced 3 March 2026, and the product is in maintenance mode: security patches, bug fixes and new-model support continue, but feature development has stopped and the team is helping existing customers migrate to other platforms. No shutdown date has been announced and the service was still operational in July 2026. If you are choosing an LLM gateway today, this is the most important fact on this page.
| Dimension | Helicone | Spendassay |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Observe and debug the LLM requests your own application makes. | Audit total AI spend across every vendor and tie it to shipped output. |
| Buyer and user | Developers and AI engineers instrumenting an app they operate. | Finance and team leads who need a CFO-forwardable AI cost report. |
| What it measures | Requests, tokens, latency, cost, and errors flowing through the gateway. | Dollars across seats, tokens, and infra, matched to what teams shipped. |
| Scope | The traffic your app sends through Helicone. | Cross-vendor, including seats and tools that never touch a gateway. |
| Evidence on every number | Logged request and token metrics from live traffic. | Each dollar carries a proof level (Counted, Compared, Estimated) and shows its formula. |
| Turns findings into recovered dollars | Not the job; surfaces usage data for engineers to act on. | Guided step-by-step instructions your own admins execute; Spendassay stays read-only and metadata-only. |
| Pricing | Legacy tiers are still published, but the product is in maintenance mode with an active migration programme. Price it as a transitional cost rather than a roadmap. | Published and self-serve: a free Snapshot, then $16 per covered engineer per month (Observe) and $40 (Control). Priced per engineer, never as a percentage of your AI spend. |
Helicone is described from its public positioning, last checked 28 Jul 2026. Check Helicone's site for specifics. Everything in the Spendassay column is what the product does today, each number carrying its proof level.
Common questions
Spendassay and Helicone
- Is Helicone a competitor to Spendassay?
- Not really. Helicone is LLM observability for the app your developers build, working at the request and token level. Spendassay is a buyer-side audit of total AI spend across every vendor, tied to shipped output. Different altitude, different buyer. Many teams run both.
- Can I use both?
- Yes. Helicone instruments the requests your application sends and helps engineers debug them. Spendassay audits the whole company's AI bill, including seats and tools that never pass through a gateway, and connects that spend to output. They cover different ground.
- Does Spendassay do what Helicone does?
- No. Spendassay does not proxy your traffic or log individual requests, and it never ingests code, prompts, or content. It reads billing and usage metadata across vendors, assigns each dollar a proof level with a visible formula, and produces a AI cost report finance can forward. For per-request app instrumentation, use a tool like Helicone.
Also compared
Others in this category, and the wider set
All comparisons · Best AI spend management tools · AI spend vs. SaaS spend management · The AI cost management guide
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