LLMOps tools pricing comparison for 2026: eight platforms side by side
By Coverge Team
The LLMOps space has settled into three functional layers: observability (tracing and monitoring), evaluation (testing and scoring), and governance (approval and deployment control). Most tools cover one or two of these layers, and their pricing reflects that scope.
This guide compares pricing across eight platforms — LangSmith, Langfuse, Braintrust, Arize, Helicone, DeepEval (Confident AI), Portkey, and Vellum — using verified pricing data from each vendor's public pages as of April 2026. The goal is to help you figure out what each tool actually costs at your scale, not just what the marketing page says.
Master pricing comparison table
| Tool | Free tier | Paid starting at | Enterprise | Billing model | Open source | Primary focus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LangSmith | 5K traces, 1 seat | $39/seat/mo (Plus) | Custom | Per-seat + traces | No | Tracing, debugging |
| Langfuse | 50K units, 2 users | $29/mo (Core) | $2,499/mo | Per-unit (graduated) | Yes (MIT) | Tracing, prompt mgmt |
| Braintrust | 1 GB data (~1M spans) | $249/mo (Pro) | Custom | Processed data (GB) | No | Evaluation, experiments |
| Arize | 25K spans, 1 GB | $50/mo (AX Pro) | Custom | Spans + storage | Yes (Phoenix) | Observability, evals |
| Helicone | 10K requests, 1 GB | $79/mo (Pro) | Custom | Request-based | Yes | Proxy-based observability |
| DeepEval | 2 seats, 5 runs/wk | $19.99/user/mo (Starter) | Custom | Per-user + usage | Yes (framework) | LLM testing, CI/CD evals |
| Portkey | 10K logs, 3-day retention | $49/mo (Production) | Custom | Log-based | Yes (gateway) | AI gateway, routing |
| Vellum | 50 builder credits | $500/mo (Pro) | Custom | Credit-based | No | Workflow builder, prompts |
Two things jump out from this table. First, billing models vary wildly — per-seat, per-trace, per-GB, per-request, per-credit — which makes direct cost comparisons impossible without normalizing for your specific workload. Second, the gap between cheapest paid tier ($19.99/user for DeepEval) and most expensive ($500/month for Vellum) is 25x, reflecting very different product scopes.
Tool-by-tool pricing breakdown
LangSmith: per-seat pricing with trace overages
LangSmith is LangChain's commercial observability platform. It has the deepest integration with the LangChain framework but works with any LLM application.
- Developer (free): 5,000 traces/month, 1 seat, 14-day retention
- Plus: $39/seat/month, 10,000 base traces, 14-day or 400-day retention
- Enterprise: Custom pricing, SSO/SAML, RBAC, extended retention
The per-seat model is the critical pricing factor. A team of five on Plus pays $195/month in seat costs alone, before any trace overages. At 10 people, that is $390/month base. Trace overages add $2.50 per 1,000 traces at 14-day retention or $5.00 per 1,000 at 400-day retention.
LangSmith is the most expensive option for teams over five people, but it remains competitive for solo developers or two-person teams that stay within the free tier. See our full LangSmith pricing breakdown and LangSmith alternative comparison.
Langfuse: open-source with affordable cloud tiers
Langfuse is an MIT-licensed observability platform acquired by ClickHouse in January 2026. The open-source core can be self-hosted at zero license cost.
- Hobby (free): 50,000 units/month, 2 users, hard cap (no overages)
- Core: $29/month, 100,000 units, unlimited users, 90-day retention
- Pro: $199/month, 100,000 units, SOC 2, HIPAA, 3-year retention
- Enterprise: $2,499/month, 100,000 base units with custom volume pricing, dedicated support
All paid tiers share the same 100,000 included units — the difference is retention, compliance, and support. Langfuse counts billing units as traces + observations + scores. A single LLM call can generate 4-8 billable units depending on pipeline complexity. Graduated overage pricing applies to all paid tiers: $8 per 100K units up to 1M, $7 per 100K from 1-10M, $6.50 per 100K from 10-50M, and $6 per 100K above 50M.
For teams that primarily need tracing and prompt management, Langfuse Core at $29/month is hard to beat. Self-hosting eliminates the license cost entirely, though you take on ClickHouse infrastructure costs ($200-800/month depending on scale). See our full Langfuse pricing breakdown and Langfuse alternative comparison.
Braintrust: data-based billing with unlimited users
Braintrust is an evaluation platform used by Notion, Replit, and Cloudflare. It raised $80 million Series B at an $800 million valuation in February 2026.
- Starter (free): 1 GB processed data (~1M spans), 10,000 scores, unlimited users, 14-day retention
- Pro: $249/month, 5 GB data, 50,000 scores, 30-day retention, unlimited users
- Enterprise: Custom, on-prem, SSO/SAML, HIPAA
Braintrust bills by processed data (bytes ingested) rather than span count. This makes costs more predictable for teams with variable payload sizes. Overages on Pro are $3/GB for data and $1.50 per 1,000 scores.
The standout feature is unlimited users at every tier. A 30-person team pays the same $249/month as a 3-person team. At scale, Braintrust can be cheaper than Langfuse because data-based billing grows slower than per-event billing. See our full Braintrust pricing breakdown and Braintrust alternative comparison.
Arize: open-source Phoenix plus affordable cloud
Arize offers two products: Phoenix (open-source, self-hosted) and AX (cloud platform). This dual approach gives teams a free on-ramp with a commercial upgrade path.
- Phoenix (open-source): Free, self-hosted, unlimited everything
- AX Free: 25,000 spans/month, 1 GB ingestion, 15-day retention
- AX Pro: $50/month, 50,000 spans, 10 GB ingestion, 30-day retention
- AX Enterprise: Custom, SOC 2, HIPAA, multi-region
AX Pro at $50/month is the cheapest commercial observability tier in this comparison. Overages are $10 per million additional spans and $3 per GB of additional storage. For teams that want cloud convenience without Langfuse's self-hosting overhead or LangSmith's per-seat costs, Arize hits a useful price point.
Phoenix as a self-hosted option competes directly with self-hosted Langfuse. The tradeoff: Phoenix has deeper ML observability features (embedding drift, performance analysis) while Langfuse has stronger prompt management and a larger community.
Helicone: proxy-first observability
Helicone works as a proxy — you route LLM API calls through Helicone and it logs everything automatically. This makes it the easiest tool to set up (one line of code to change your base URL) but limits it to request-level observability.
- Hobby (free): 10,000 requests/month, 1 GB storage, 7-day retention
- Pro: $79/month, usage-based beyond 10K, 1-month retention, unlimited seats
- Team: $799/month, SOC 2, HIPAA, 3-month retention, 5 organizations
- Enterprise: Custom, on-prem, forever retention
Helicone Pro at $79/month is mid-range for observability. The proxy architecture makes it framework-agnostic — no LangChain dependency, no SDK changes — but it also means Helicone captures less granular span data than tools that instrument at the code level. The 7-day retention on the free tier is the shortest in this comparison.
Helicone is open-source and can be self-hosted, though the self-hosted path is less commonly used than Langfuse's. The platform includes built-in caching that can reduce LLM API costs by serving identical responses without hitting the provider.
DeepEval (Confident AI): testing framework with cloud platform
DeepEval is an open-source LLM testing framework. Confident AI is the commercial platform that adds cloud dashboards, collaboration, and managed eval infrastructure on top.
- Free: 2 seats, 1 project, 5 test runs/week, 1 GB trace storage, 1-week retention
- Starter: From $19.99/user/month, unlimited retention, custom metrics
- Premium: From $49.99/user/month, 15 GB traces, chat simulations, API access
- Team: Custom, 10 users included, SSO, HIPAA/SOC 2
- Enterprise: Custom, unlimited, on-prem
DeepEval is the only tool in this comparison built specifically for CI/CD integration. The framework runs eval suites in your test pipeline and reports results to Confident AI's dashboard. Additional users cost $20-50/user depending on tier, and additional projects cost $25-50/project.
The per-user pricing at Starter ($19.99) is the cheapest entry point for a single developer who needs more than a free tier. But costs scale linearly with headcount — a 10-person team on Premium pays $500/month in seat costs, comparable to Vellum's Pro.
Portkey: AI gateway with observability
Portkey is primarily an AI gateway — it handles model routing, fallbacks, load balancing, retries, and caching. Observability (logs, traces, cost tracking) is a secondary capability built on top of the gateway infrastructure.
- Developer (free): 10,000 recorded logs/month, 3-day retention
- Production: $49/month, 100,000 logs/month, 30-day retention, RBAC
- Enterprise: Custom, 10M+ logs, SSO, SOC 2, HIPAA, VPC hosting
Portkey Production at $49/month is competitive for teams that need both a gateway and basic observability. Overages are $9 per additional 100,000 requests. The free tier's 3-day log retention is very short, but exceeding the request limit does not affect your actual API calls — it only stops recording logs.
Portkey also has a fully open-source gateway that can be self-hosted. The commercial platform adds managed hosting, collaboration features, and compliance certifications.
Vellum: workflow builder with credit-based pricing
Vellum is a workflow-building platform for designing, testing, and deploying LLM applications. It overlaps with the other tools in prompt management and evaluation but adds visual workflow design and hosted agent deployment.
- Free: 50 builder credits/month, 1 seat, knowledge base (20 documents)
- Pro: $500/month, higher limits, RBAC
- Enterprise: Custom, dedicated support, DPA/BAA
Vellum's pricing model is fundamentally different from the observability tools. Credits are consumed when building and testing workflows in the platform. Running deployed workflows does not consume credits, and Vellum passes through model provider costs at cost with no markup.
At $500/month for Pro, Vellum is the most expensive paid entry point in this comparison. The price reflects a broader product scope — Vellum replaces parts of your development environment, not just your monitoring stack. Teams that only need observability or evaluation should look elsewhere.
Pricing by team size
The right tool depends heavily on team size because billing models vary. Here is what each tool costs for common team configurations, using the cheapest paid tier that covers the scenario.
Solo developer or two-person team
| Tool | Monthly cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Arize AX Free | $0 | 25K spans, 15-day retention |
| Langfuse Hobby | $0 | 50K units, most generous free observability |
| Braintrust Starter | $0 | 1 GB data, best free eval tier |
| Portkey Developer | $0 | 10K logs, 3-day retention |
| DeepEval Free | $0 | 5 test runs/week |
| Helicone Hobby | $0 | 10K requests, 7-day retention |
| LangSmith Developer | $0 | 5K traces, most limited free tier |
Every tool has a usable free tier for one or two developers. Braintrust's Starter (1 GB data) and Langfuse Hobby (50K units) offer the most generous free volumes. LangSmith's 5,000-trace limit is the tightest.
Five-person team, moderate production traffic
| Tool | Monthly cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Langfuse Core | $29 | Unlimited users, 100K units |
| Portkey Production | $49 | 100K logs, RBAC |
| Arize AX Pro | $50 | 50K spans, 10 GB storage |
| Helicone Pro | $79 | Usage-based, unlimited seats |
| DeepEval Starter | $100 | 5 users × $19.99 |
| LangSmith Plus | $195 | 5 seats × $39 (before overages) |
| Braintrust Pro | $249 | Unlimited users, 5 GB data |
| Vellum Pro | $500 | Credit-based |
At five people, Langfuse Core at $29/month is the clear budget winner. LangSmith's per-seat model puts it at $195/month — nearly 7x more expensive than Langfuse for the same team size.
Twenty-person team, heavy production traffic
| Tool | Monthly cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Langfuse Core | $29 | Still unlimited users |
| Portkey Production | $49 | Still 100K logs |
| Arize AX Pro | $50 | Still the same price |
| Helicone Pro | $79 | Unlimited seats |
| Braintrust Pro | $249 | Unlimited users |
| DeepEval Starter | $400 | 20 users × $19.99 |
| LangSmith Plus | $780 | 20 seats × $39 (before overages) |
| Vellum Pro | $500 | Credit-based |
At 20 people, the per-seat tools diverge dramatically. LangSmith costs $780/month in seats alone. DeepEval hits $400/month. Tools with flat pricing (Langfuse, Arize, Helicone, Braintrust, Portkey) look increasingly attractive as teams grow. Braintrust's unlimited users at $249/month is particularly strong here — the same price whether you have 3 or 300 people.
What the pricing table does not tell you
Pricing is one input into a tool decision, and often not the most important one. Several factors that matter for production use are invisible in a comparison table.
Billing unit definitions are not comparable. A "trace" in LangSmith is not the same as a "unit" in Langfuse or a "span" in Arize. Langfuse counts traces + observations + scores as separate units. Braintrust counts bytes, not events. Converting between these units requires knowing your specific pipeline architecture.
Retention limits affect total cost. Short retention (Helicone's 7 days, Portkey's 3 days on free) means you lose debugging context quickly. Longer retention (LangSmith's 400-day option, Helicone Enterprise's forever) costs more but provides historical comparison capability that matters for regression detection.
Self-hosting shifts cost, it does not eliminate it. Langfuse, Arize Phoenix, Helicone, Portkey, and DeepEval all offer self-hosted options. License cost drops to zero, but you take on infrastructure costs ($200-1,000+/month for ClickHouse/PostgreSQL/compute) and operational burden (upgrades, monitoring, backups).
None of these tools cover the full lifecycle. Observability tools tell you what happened. Evaluation tools tell you if it was good enough. Neither tool category handles the deployment decision — gating a bad pipeline from reaching production via eval gates, requiring human approval, generating compliance audit trails with proof bundles, or auto-rolling back failures. That governance layer is a separate concern that tools like Coverge address alongside the eval and observability stack.
How to choose
Start with what you need most. If your team spends most of its time debugging production issues, pick an LLM observability tool (Langfuse, LangSmith, Arize, Helicone). If you spend most of your time evaluating model quality before deployment, pick an evaluation tool (Braintrust, DeepEval). If you need model routing and cost optimization, pick a gateway (Portkey). If you need visual workflow design, pick Vellum.
Match the billing model to your growth pattern. Per-seat tools (LangSmith, DeepEval) get expensive as teams grow. Flat-rate tools (Langfuse Core, Arize AX Pro, Portkey Production) stay constant regardless of headcount. Usage-based tools (Braintrust, Helicone) scale with traffic. Pick the model that stays predictable for your situation.
Consider the self-hosting option seriously. If you have infrastructure engineering capacity and data sovereignty requirements, self-hosted Langfuse or Arize Phoenix eliminates license costs entirely. The break-even point versus cloud depends on your ops team's cost, but for teams processing millions of events monthly, self-hosting often wins on total cost.
Budget for more than one tool. Most production teams end up using two or three tools from this list — one for observability, one for evaluation, and often a gateway. A practical stack like Langfuse Core ($29) + Braintrust Starter ($0) + Portkey Developer ($0) costs $29/month and covers tracing, evaluation, and routing.
FAQ
What is the cheapest LLMOps tool?
For cloud-hosted observability, Langfuse Core at $29/month with unlimited users is the cheapest paid option. Arize AX Pro at $50/month is second. For evaluation, Braintrust Starter is free with 1 GB of data (roughly one million spans) and unlimited users. For zero-cost options, self-hosted Langfuse, Arize Phoenix, Portkey gateway, and the DeepEval open-source framework are all free to run on your own infrastructure.
What are the best free LLM observability tools?
Every tool in this comparison offers a free tier. The most generous by volume are Braintrust Starter (1 GB data, ~1M spans), Langfuse Hobby (50,000 units), and Arize AX Free (25,000 spans). For self-hosted options with no usage limits, Langfuse (MIT license), Arize Phoenix (open source), and Helicone (open source) can all be deployed on your own infrastructure at zero license cost.
How much does LLMOps tooling cost for a 10-person team?
For a 10-person team on paid tiers: Langfuse Core costs $29/month (unlimited users), Portkey Production costs $49/month, Arize AX Pro costs $50/month, Helicone Pro costs $79/month, DeepEval Starter costs $200/month (10 × $19.99), Braintrust Pro costs $249/month (unlimited users), LangSmith Plus costs $390/month (10 × $39), and Vellum Pro costs $500/month. Per-seat tools become significantly more expensive as team size grows.
Which LLMOps tools can be self-hosted?
Langfuse (MIT license), Arize Phoenix (open source), Helicone (open source), Portkey gateway (open source), and DeepEval (open-source testing framework) all offer self-hosted options. LangSmith, Braintrust, and Vellum are cloud-only with no self-hosting path. Self-hosting eliminates license fees but requires infrastructure management — budget $200-1,000/month for databases, compute, and storage depending on scale.
How do LLMOps billing models compare?
Every tool counts usage differently. LangSmith bills per seat plus per-trace overages. Langfuse counts traces + observations + scores as separate billable units. Braintrust bills by processed data in GB. Arize bills by span count plus storage. Helicone bills per request. DeepEval bills per user plus per-eval-run overages. Portkey bills per recorded log. Vellum uses builder credits. Converting between these units requires knowing your pipeline architecture — there is no universal "cost per LLM call" comparison.
How do LLMOps tool prices compare in 2026?
The LLMOps market in 2026 spans from free open-source tools to $500+/month platforms. For cloud-hosted observability, prices range from Langfuse Core at $29/month to LangSmith at $39/seat/month. For evaluation, Braintrust Pro costs $249/month with unlimited users. Gateway tools like Portkey start at $49/month. The biggest pricing shift in 2026 has been toward usage-based and flat-rate models over per-seat pricing, with tools like Langfuse, Braintrust, and Arize all offering unlimited users at every tier. Self-hosted options (Langfuse, Arize Phoenix, Helicone, Portkey) eliminate license costs entirely.
What is the best LLMOps pricing model for startups?
For early-stage startups, flat-rate pricing without per-seat charges scales best. Langfuse Core ($29/month, unlimited users) and Braintrust Starter (free, unlimited users) let you add team members without increasing costs. Avoid per-seat tools like LangSmith if you expect your engineering team to grow quickly. Several tools also offer startup programs — Helicone offers 50% off the first year, and Arize offers special startup pricing on AX Pro.