Obsivara vs Helicone
Helicone was a popular LLM observability tool known for a one-line proxy/gateway integration that logs requests, latency, and cost. Following its acquisition by Mintlify in March 2026, Helicone moved to maintenance mode — receiving security and bug fixes only, with no active feature development, while customers are guided to migrate elsewhere. Obsivara is a natural migration target: an actively developed AI operations platform with tracing, cost intelligence, health scoring, and predictive alerts across LLMs, agents, and workflows.
Obsivara goes beyond per-request logging to whole-system operations — agents, tools, and workflows — with health scores, predictive failure alerts, a dependency knowledge map, and a weekly prioritized audit.
Helicone's strength was speed of adoption: route requests through its gateway (or a header change) and immediately get request logs, latency, caching, and cost tracking for LLM calls. However, after Mintlify acquired Helicone in March 2026, the product moved to maintenance mode — security and bug fixes only, no active development — and Mintlify is helping customers migrate to alternative platforms.
Obsivara vs Helicone: how do they compare?
| Dimension | Obsivara | Helicone |
|---|---|---|
| Product status (2026) | Actively developed | Maintenance mode — acquired by Mintlify, customers migrating off |
| Primary focus | End-to-end AI ops for LLMs, agents & workflows | LLM request logging via proxy/gateway |
| Fastest setup | SDK / OTLP / webhook / n8n | One-line proxy or header change |
| Scope | Runs, spans, tools, agents, workflows | LLM requests / responses |
| Cost intelligence | Spend by model/agent/workflow + waste detection | Per-request cost & caching |
| Predictive failure alerts | Yes | Not a product focus |
| Health scoring & knowledge map | Yes | No |
| Workflow / n8n ingest | Native n8n + webhooks | LLM proxy only |
| Ingestion | SDK, OTLP, webhooks, n8n | Proxy/gateway, SDK |
Choose Obsivara when
- You need to monitor agents and multi-step workflows, not just individual LLM requests.
- You want health scoring, predictive alerts, and a knowledge map of AI dependencies.
- You care about cost attribution across models, agents, and workflows.
Choose Helicone when
- You already run Helicone and only need it to keep operating short-term while you plan a migration.
- You need nothing beyond basic per-request LLM logging and are comfortable staying on a product in maintenance mode.
Questions
As of March 2026, Helicone was acquired by Mintlify and moved to maintenance mode — it receives security and bug fixes but no active feature development, and Mintlify is guiding customers to migrate to other platforms. Teams wanting an actively developed alternative can move to Obsivara via SDK, OpenTelemetry, or webhooks.
No — Obsivara observes from outside your requests via SDK, OpenTelemetry, webhooks, or native n8n. That avoids putting a proxy in your critical request path while still capturing cost and latency.
Yes, and it also rolls cost up by model, agent, and workflow with waste detection and model comparison — beyond per-request logging.
Helicone's proxy is the fastest possible start. Obsivara's SDK/OTLP/webhook setup is still lightweight and, for n8n, connects with a read-only key and no code changes.