# Culpa vs Helicone > Helicone was acquired by Mintlify and says its services now sit in maintenance mode. What that means for your cost decision, and the question Culpa answers. URL: https://getculpa.com/culpa-vs-helicone Last reviewed: 2026-08-03 ## Answer Helicone is an open-source AI gateway and observability platform, acquired by Mintlify and described by its own team as running in maintenance mode. It tracks cost per session and per user on its own cloud. Culpa, a local-first LLM cost, margin, and forecast ledger, keeps that on your infrastructure and adds margin against revenue and a forecast. ## Why this happens Start with the fact that changes the decision. Helicone announced on 2026-03-03 that it had been acquired by Mintlify, and its own post says services stay live in maintenance mode, with security updates, new models and bug fixes still shipping. That's a fair description of a supported product rather than a dead one, and it's also a reason to ask where the roadmap goes before you build a cost practice on it. The deeper difference has nothing to do with the acquisition, and it isn't attribution either. Helicone's own pricing table lists Sessions, User analytics and Custom properties on every tier including the free one, so it does group cost by conversation and by user. What it doesn't publish is margin against what a customer pays you, a forecast of next month from your own history, or a design where the prompts stay on your infrastructure rather than on a vendor's with a retention tier attached. ## What this usually looks like - You have request-level logs and still can't name the conversation that drove last month's spike. - Your observability retention is a plan tier rather than a decision you made. - Nobody can tell you whether a specific customer is profitable at their current usage. - You know the total bill and you can't forecast next month's from your own history. ## Common mistakes - Reading maintenance mode as either dead or fine. Why it hurts: It's neither, and treating it as either skips the question of where the roadmap goes. Do instead: Take the announcement at its word, then decide how much new capability you need from this layer. - Assuming cost attribution and margin are the same feature. Why it hurts: Attribution tells you a customer cost $80. Margin needs that set against what they pay you. Do instead: Check whether your tool holds revenue at all. Most observability tools deliberately don't. - Letting a plan tier decide how long your prompts are kept. Why it hurts: Retention becomes a billing question rather than a privacy one, and the default is somebody else's. Do instead: Decide retention deliberately, and prefer a design where your prompts stay on your infrastructure. ## Self-check - Ask your current tool for the single most expensive conversation last month. - Ask it what one named customer cost you, against what they pay. - Ask it what next month costs at your current growth, with a range rather than a point. - Check what your plan's data retention actually is, and who chose it. - Whatever goes unanswered is the gap, and the gap is the whole comparison. ## Two products, four questions, read off both sites Helicone's published plans and its acquisition post, read 2026-08-03, against what Culpa does. No pricing comparison is drawn, because the two are priced on different units and a like-for-like number would be invented rather than measured. Helicone: open-source gateway and observability, routing, caching, rate limits and automatic fallbacks Helicone: Sessions, User analytics and Custom properties on every tier, so cost groups by conversation and user Helicone plans: Hobby free at 10,000 requests, Pro $79 a month, Team $799, Enterprise custom Helicone retention: 7 days on Hobby, 1 month on Pro, 3 months on Team, forever on Enterprise Helicone status: acquired by Mintlify, maintenance mode, security updates and new models still shipping Culpa: the same attribution, plus margin against revenue you enter and a forecast of next month Culpa retention: your prompts stay on your infrastructure, so retention is your decision rather than a tier Both attribute cost, and the honest gap is narrower than a comparison page usually admits. Helicone routes, caches and is open source. Culpa adds margin against revenue and a forecast, and keeps the prompts on your own infrastructure rather than on a vendor's with a retention tier attached. ## Cost figures Every figure carries its confidence and its source. No figure on this site is provider-reported. - $79 to $799 per month, Helicone's published Pro and Team plan prices, before usage-based charges [provider-reported] Source: helicone.ai/pricing, read 2026-08-03. Both tiers state that usage-based pricing applies on top. ## FAQ Q: Is Helicone shutting down? A: No, and it's worth quoting them rather than paraphrasing. Their post of 2026-03-03 says Helicone has been acquired by Mintlify and that services remain live for the foreseeable future in maintenance mode, with security updates, new models and bug and performance fixes still shipping. Q: How is Culpa different from Helicone? A: Less than a comparison page usually claims, on attribution. Helicone publishes Sessions, User analytics and Custom properties on every tier, so it groups cost by conversation and user too. The differences worth choosing on are margin against revenue you enter, a forecast of next month from your own history, and prompts that stay on your infrastructure. Helicone's own strengths are routing, caching and being open source. Q: Do I have to send Culpa my prompts? A: No. Culpa runs on your own infrastructure and your prompts and responses stay there. Culpa counts the calls to run your plan. That's the structural difference from any hosted observability layer, whose retention is set by the plan you're on. Q: Can I run both? A: Yes, and some teams should. They answer different questions, and Culpa reconciles what it captures against your provider invoice regardless of what else sits in your stack. ## Sources - Helicone: joining Mintlify: https://www.helicone.ai/blog/joining-mintlify - Helicone pricing: https://www.helicone.ai/pricing Run the free Cost Leak Scan: https://app.getculpa.com/scan?source=pseo&slug=culpa-vs-helicone&cluster=competitor Machine-readable index of every guide: https://getculpa.com/api/pages Human-readable index of every guide: https://getculpa.com/guides Site overview: https://app.getculpa.com/llms.txt Privacy: Culpa runs on your infrastructure. Your prompts and responses never leave it. Culpa counts calls to run your plan, and it fails open, so if it ever breaks your app keeps running.