Open-source AI infrastructure
Compare Everstack and Helicone on licence terms, which tier unlocks on-prem deployment, pricing, and how far each one goes past logging model calls.
Helicone is Apache-2.0 across the repository with no separately licensed enterprise directory, verified against its LICENSE file. So is Everstack. That is a cleaner structure than several better-known alternatives in this category, and it means licence terms should not decide this comparison.
Mintlify acquired Helicone in posts dated 3 March 2026. Helicone's says its services will remain live for the foreseeable future in maintenance mode, and both companies define maintenance mode as security updates, bug fixes and new models continuing to ship. The commit history agrees: between 37 and 76 commits a month in the four months before the acquisition, and between 1 and 6 a month since April 2026. The repository is Apache-2.0 and not archived, and its README says nothing about any of it, so it reads as a normally active project until you check the dates.
Helicone's pricing lists Hobby free with 10,000 requests, Pro at $79 per month, Team at $799 per month with SOC 2 and HIPAA, and Enterprise as contact-us with SAML SSO and on-prem deployment. The Apache-2.0 code is available regardless, but the supported on-prem path is a sales conversation. For Everstack, self-hosting is the default. Figures August 2026.
If observability is the whole problem, Helicone's integration is about as low-friction as this category gets, its free tier is large enough to evaluate properly, and it has a longer production track record than Everstack. Buying a platform for a logging problem is over-buying. Weigh the maintenance-mode announcement yourself: it constrains new feature work rather than ending the product, and security updates, bug fixes and new models are all inside what the company says it will keep shipping.