Staxly

Helicone vs Qdrant

Open-source LLM observability — 1-line integration via proxy
vs. Rust-based vector DB — high performance, OSS, managed cloud

Helicone websiteQdrant website

Pricing tiers

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

Qdrant

Free Forever
Single-node 0.5 vCPU / 1 GB RAM / 4 GB disk. Free cloud inference models.
Free
Standard
Usage-based. Dedicated resources, flexible scaling. 99.5% SLA. Backups + DR. Free inference tokens.
$0 base (usage-based)
Self-Host (OSS)
Apache 2.0 licensed. Run for free.
$0 base (usage-based)
Hybrid Cloud (BYOC)
Run managed cluster on your infra. Data stays in your network.
Custom
Premium
Min spend required. SSO + private VPC links. 99.9% SLA. 24x7 enterprise support.
Custom
Private Cloud
Dedicated + isolated. Custom SLA. Large enterprise.
Custom
Qdrant website

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing hobby on Helicone vs free on Qdrant.

MetricHeliconeQdrant
No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers.

Features

Helicone · 16 features

  • AlertsThresholds on error rate, latency, cost, usage. Pro+.
  • Async LoggingLog AFTER the LLM call via SDK — zero added latency.
  • Cost TrackingAutomatic cost calculation per call by provider/model.
  • DashboardRequest tables, aggregate metrics, cost breakdowns.
  • EvaluatorsLLM-as-judge + custom evaluators on runs.
  • ExperimentsA/B test different models/prompts.
  • HQL (SQL over traces)Query your logged data with SQL. Pro+.
  • PII RedactionAutomatically scrub emails, credit cards, etc. from logs.
  • Prompt CachingCache identical requests → save money.
  • Prompts & VersionsStore + version + A/B test prompts.
  • Proxy Mode1-line integration via base URL swap. Captures all requests.
  • Rate LimitingPer-user + per-key rate limit policies.
  • ReportsScheduled email reports with KPIs.
  • Self-HostingDocker + k8s deployment.
  • SessionsGroup related calls (chat sessions, agent runs).
  • User MetricsPer-user cost + usage segmentation.

Qdrant · 13 features

  • BYOC (Hybrid Cloud)Managed Qdrant in your cloud account.
  • Cloud InferenceHosted embedding models for free tokens.
  • Cluster MonitoringPrometheus metrics + health.
  • CollectionsTyped collections with named vectors + payload schema.
  • DistributedHorizontal sharding + Raft replication.
  • Hybrid SearchSparse + dense + keyword in one query.
  • Multi-VectorMultiple vectors per point (text + image, etc.).
  • Open SourceApache 2.0 licensed.
  • Payload FiltersRich filter DSL with indexed fields.
  • QuantizationScalar + product + binary for memory reduction.
  • RBACAPI-key scopes + roles.
  • Snapshots + RestoreBackup + DR primitives.
  • Sparse VectorsBM25 + SPLADE sparse embeddings natively.

Developer interfaces

KindHeliconeQdrant
CLIHelicone CLI
SDKhelicone (npm), helicone-pythongo-client, java-client, qdrant-client (py), qdrant-client (rust), qdrant-dotnet, @qdrant/js-client-rest
RESTAsync Logging API, Helicone Proxy, Query API (HQL)Qdrant REST API
MCPQdrant MCP
OTHERHelicone Dashboard, WebhooksQdrant gRPC
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Helicone and Qdrant are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

Want this comparison in your AI agent's context? Install the free Staxly MCP server.