Probe0 vs Helicone
Helicone is a hosted or self-hosted gateway built for applications and the teams that run them. Probe0 is a proxy that runs on one developer machine and sits under the AI coding agent CLIs already installed there.
An open-source (Apache-2.0) LLM observability platform and AI gateway, available as managed cloud or self-hosted, that logs requests and adds routing, caching and rate limiting at the proxy layer.
| Feature | Probe0 | Helicone | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Your Mac only. No Probe0 server exists. | Managed cloud, or self-hosted via Docker or Helm. | Even |
| Setup for one developer | One proxy plus one certificate, once. Claude Code, Codex and Cursor are then covered. | Swap the API base URL per tool, or run the container stack yourself. | Probe0 |
| Local model routing | Sends work to a model already loaded in Ollama or LM Studio, retries weak answers on the cloud. | Logs and monitors Ollama and other OpenAI-compatible local endpoints. | Probe0 |
| Semantic cache and tool calls | Strict similarity floor, and refuses to match anything carrying tool calls. | Semantic caching in the gateway, threshold-based. | Probe0 |
| What a cache hit costs | Served from local disk. Never touches the network. | Cache lookup happens at the gateway, over the network. | Probe0 |
| When the budget runs out | Hard cap per run and per day. Warns, then pauses. | Graduated cost alerts and rate limits per environment. | Probe0 |
| Who spent the money | Per-process attribution: model, tokens, real cost, latency, calling process. | Per request, keyed by custom properties you set yourself. | Probe0 |
| Knowing what to turn off | Each module toggles alone and reports its own savings. Flags a plan tier above your usage. | Aggregate cost dashboards across models and environments. | Probe0 |
| Observability depth | A local ledger you query on the machine. | Billions of logged interactions on ClickHouse, sessions, prompt experiments, webhook scoring. | Competitor |
Helicone's observability core is the strongest part of the product, and I have not built anything close to it. What I built instead answers the question a developer running coding agents on a laptop actually has: my agents are burning money here, and I want to see it and stop it. Probe0 runs as a local LLM proxy with no server component, so the request bodies of a private repository never leave the machine. Setup is one proxy and one certificate rather than a base-URL swap repeated for every tool, and after that Claude Code, Codex and Cursor are covered without per-tool configuration. Each module is switchable on its own and reports what it saved: Local Routing, Model Tiering, Exact Cache, Semantic Cache, Request Coalescing, Spend Guard, Recording. The ledger stores model, tokens, real cost, latency and which process made the call, so you can see that a background agent, not you, spent the afternoon budget. Because Probe0 knows your real usage, it also tells you when you are paying for a plan tier above what you consume.
The design choices follow from the traffic. Coding agent traffic is full of tool calls, and a semantic cache hit on a conversation carrying tool calls corrupts a run, so Probe0 refuses those matches outright instead of tuning a threshold down. Exact cache hits come off local disk and never open a socket, which means they cost nothing and still work on a plane. Spend Guard is a hard cap that pauses, because an alert at 95 percent does not help when an agent is looping unattended at two in the morning. Local Routing sends work to whatever model is already resident in Ollama or LM Studio and retries weak answers on the cloud, which is a different posture from logging local model traffic for visibility.
Helicone's hosted version runs on Cloudflare Workers with ClickHouse and Kafka behind it, adds tens of milliseconds, and tracks cost across 300+ models with a public cost repo maintained by people whose job that is. That is the right machine for instrumenting an application in production, and I would use it for one. It is a lot of machine for a single developer whose entire spend comes from three CLIs on one Mac, and self-hosting it to keep code local means running and maintaining that stack. Probe0 is the smaller thing that already knows what those CLIs are doing.
The verdict
Probe0 is the one I would install if your spend comes from coding agent CLIs on a Mac: local routing, on-disk caching, per-process cost attribution and a cap that actually pauses, with none of that traffic reaching a third-party service. Helicone is the better pick when you are instrumenting a production application and need shared dashboards, prompt experiments and provider coverage maintained for you. Short of that, Probe0 covers the machine you are actually spending money on.
Questions
- Is Probe0 a Helicone alternative?
- For a solo developer running AI coding agents on a Mac, yes. For an engineering team instrumenting a production application, no. Helicone is a hosted or self-hosted LLM proxy and observability platform for applications, and Probe0 has no server, no seats and no team dashboards.
- Does Helicone work with Claude Code and Cursor?
- Helicone integrates by swapping the API base URL, so any tool that lets you point at a custom endpoint can route through it, configured per tool. Probe0 installs one local proxy and one certificate, after which every coding agent CLI on the machine routes through it without per-tool setup.
- Can I keep my code from leaving my machine?
- With Probe0 the proxy, the exact cache and the semantic index all run locally, so nothing is sent to a Probe0 service because there is not one. Helicone can achieve something similar by self-hosting its open-source stack on infrastructure you control, which is documented and supported, though it means running and maintaining that stack.
- Which gives better LLM cost control?
- Helicone gives graduated cost alerts and rate limits, with precise cost tracking through its gateway and best-effort estimates elsewhere. Probe0 enforces a hard cap per run and per day that warns and then pauses, and records real cost per request alongside the process that made it.