Keywords AI
Helicone vs OpenRouter
Compare Helicone and OpenRouter side by side. Both are tools in the LLM Gateways category.
Quick Comparison
| Category | LLM Gateways | LLM Gateways |
| Pricing | Freemium | Usage-based |
| Best For | Developer teams who need visibility into their LLM usage, costs, and performance | Developers who want easy access to a wide variety of LLM models through a single API |
| Website | helicone.ai | openrouter.ai |
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When to Choose Helicone vs OpenRouter
- LLM cost monitoring and optimization
- Production request debugging
- User-level usage tracking and rate limiting
- Accessing models not available through major providers
- Quick model prototyping and comparison
- Pay-per-use without provider commitments
About Helicone
Helicone is an open-source LLM observability and proxy platform. By adding a single line of code, developers get request logging, cost tracking, caching, rate limiting, and analytics for their LLM applications. Helicone supports all major LLM providers and can function as both a gateway proxy and a logging-only integration.
About OpenRouter
OpenRouter is an API aggregator that provides access to dozens of LLM providers through a unified OpenAI-compatible API. It offers model routing, price comparison, and rate limit management. OpenRouter is popular with developers who want to quickly switch between models or access models not available through major providers. The platform supports pay-per-use pricing and passes through provider-specific features.
What is LLM Gateways?
Unified API platforms and proxies that aggregate multiple LLM providers behind a single endpoint, providing model routing, fallback, caching, rate limiting, cost optimization, and access control.
Browse all LLM Gateways tools →