DeepYard

Helicone vs Zep

Side-by-side comparison built from DeepYard's structured catalog. Content updated Aug 21, 2026.

Direct Answer

Helicone suits teams needing freemium $20/mo, observability focus, and 6,093 GitHub stars in current listing data. Zep suits teams needing freemium $29/mo, memory focus, and 4,857 GitHub stars in current listing data. This summary reflects catalog metadata only for decision support, not independent testing.

What this comparison weighs

  • Pricing and free-tier availability
  • License model and deployment fit
  • GitHub adoption and contributor depth
  • Catalog tags, integrations, and supported workflows
H

Helicone

Open-source LLM observability proxy with one-line integration

OSSfreemium
6.1K6d ago96
Visit GitHub
Z

Zep

Long-term memory and knowledge graph store for AI assistants and agents

OSSfreemium
4.9K3d ago18
Visit GitHub
MetricHeliconeZep
GitHub Stars6.1K4.9K
Contributors9618
Last CommitAug 16, 2026Aug 19, 2026
Open Issues15023
Licenseopen-sourceopen-source
Pricingfreemiumfreemium
Free TierYesYes
Categorydev-toolsdev-tools
TrendingNoNo

Choose Helicone if you need

  • • Helicone stands out for Observability workflows that are not listed for Zep.
  • • Helicone is the stronger pick when Azure Openai matters because that capability is listed only on its profile.
  • • Helicone shows broader GitHub adoption with 6,093 stars versus 4,857 for Zep.

Choose Zep if you need

  • • Zep stands out for Memory workflows that are not listed for Helicone.
  • • Zep is the stronger pick when Llamaindex matters because that capability is listed only on its profile.
  • • Zep is the cleaner fit if you specifically need Memory workflows from the catalog tags.

Meaningful differences

  • • Pricing model: Helicone is listed as freemium from $20/mo, while Zep is listed as freemium from $29/mo.
  • • Workflow emphasis: Helicone highlights Observability, while Zep highlights Memory.
  • • GitHub adoption: Helicone shows 6,093 stars versus 4,857 for Zep.
  • • Contributor count: Helicone lists 96 contributors and Zep lists 18.

Shared capabilities

  • • Llm Ops
  • • Open Source
  • • Openai
  • • Anthropic
  • • Langchain

Shared Tags

llm-opsopen-source

Only in Helicone

observabilityproxycost-tracking

Only in Zep

memoryknowledge-graphagents

Limitations and evidence

  • • DeepYard compares structured public metadata; this is not an independent benchmark unless a test record is shown.
  • • Signals such as stars, contributors, and last commit indicate public activity, not purchase fit or runtime quality.
  • • Pricing and feature coverage reflect the stored listing snapshot and may lag vendor changes between refreshes.

Source links

Manifest content date: 2026-08-21

About Helicone

Helicone is an open-source observability platform for LLMs that works as a transparent proxy — add one line to your base URL and immediately get request logging, cost tracking, latency histograms, and user-level analytics. It supports caching, rate limiting, and prompt management out of the box, making it one of the fastest ways to add production visibility to any OpenAI-compatible API call.

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About Zep

Zep is an open-source long-term memory store designed specifically for AI assistants and agents. It ingests conversation histories and documents, builds a persistent knowledge graph of entities and relationships, and serves relevant context back to the model at inference time. Zep automatically handles memory summarization, fact extraction, and temporal reasoning — enabling agents that remain coherent and personalized across thousands of interactions.

View full listing

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