Staxly

Langfuse vs OpenRouter

Open-source LLM engineering platform — observability, prompts, evals
vs. Unified API for 300+ LLMs across 60+ providers — 1 key, any model

Langfuse websiteOpenRouter website

Pricing tiers

Langfuse

Hobby (Cloud Free)
Free. 50k units/month included. 30 days data access. 2 users. Community support.
Free
Self-Hosted (OSS)
MIT-licensed. Docker Compose or Kubernetes deployment. Unlimited.
$0 base (usage-based)
Core
$29/month. 100k units included ($8 per 100k overage). 90 days retention. Unlimited users. In-app support.
$29/mo
Pro
$199/month. 100k units included + same overage. 3 YEARS retention. Unlimited annotation queues. High rate limits.
$199/mo
Teams Add-on
+$300/month. Adds Enterprise SSO + fine-grained RBAC + dedicated Slack support to Pro.
$300/mo
Enterprise
$2,499/month. Everything + custom rate limits, uptime SLA, dedicated support engineer. Yearly options.
$2499/mo
Langfuse website

OpenRouter

Free
25+ free models. 50 requests/day rate limit. 1M free requests/month base.
Free
Pay-as-you-go
5.5% platform fee on usage. Access to 300+ models, 60+ providers. High global rate limits.
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Volume-based pricing, bulk discounts, SSO/SAML, dedicated rate limits. 5M free requests/month.
Custom
OpenRouter website

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing hobby on Langfuse vs free on OpenRouter.

MetricLangfuseOpenRouter
No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers.

Features

Langfuse · 16 features

  • Annotation QueuesHuman reviewers rate traces. Unlimited on Pro+.
  • DashboardsAggregate metrics, cost, quality across projects.
  • DatasetsCurate test sets from production traces. Run experiments.
  • EU Cloud RegionGDPR-compliant hosting in EU.
  • EvaluationsLLM-as-judge, manual scores, custom model-graded evaluators.
  • LLM Cost TrackingAutomatic cost calculation per provider/model.
  • OpenTelemetry NativeOTel SDK → Langfuse endpoint works out of box.
  • PlaygroundTest prompts + models + variables live.
  • Prompt ManagementVersion, tag, label prompts. Reference from code by label.
  • Public APIFull REST API for ingest, query, prompt management.
  • Python @observe decoratorOne-line decorator to trace any function.
  • Self-HostingDocker Compose + k8s Helm chart.
  • SessionsGroup related traces (conversations, agent runs).
  • TracingCapture every LLM call, tool call, nested span with inputs/outputs/cost.
  • Users TrackingSegment traces by user ID, track per-user cost.
  • WebhooksSubscribe to trace completion events.

OpenRouter · 15 features

  • 300+ ModelsClaude, GPT, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, Qwen, DeepSeek, Cohere, Grok + open-source.
  • 60+ ProvidersAnthropic, OpenAI, Google, Together, Fireworks, Groq, DeepInfra, Replicate, etc.
  • Auto FallbackAutomatic retry to backup provider on failure.
  • Bring Your Own KeyUse your own provider keys → pay providers directly + no platform fee.
  • Credit SystemPrepay credits via card, crypto, or bank.
  • Data Retention ControlsOpt-out of training/retention per provider.
  • Free Models Tier25+ models available at $0 (limited rate).
  • Prompt CachingAutomatic cache for identical prefixes (provider-dependent).
  • Provider PreferencesPin preferred providers per request or default.
  • Rankings & StatsPublic leaderboard of most-used models.
  • Regional RoutingRoute requests to specific geographic regions.
  • StreamingSSE + partial completions.
  • Structured OutputsJSON-mode + JSON schema across supporting models.
  • Tool Use / Function CallingUnified tool calling across providers.
  • Unified OpenAI-Compat APISame endpoint for every model + provider.

Developer interfaces

KindLangfuseOpenRouter
SDKlangfuse-js, langfuse-pythonAny OpenAI SDK
RESTLangfuse REST APIOpenRouter API (OpenAI-compat)
MCPLangfuse MCP ServerOpenRouter MCP
OTHERLangfuse Dashboard, OpenTelemetry endpointOpenRouter Dashboard
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Langfuse and OpenRouter are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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