LangSmith alternatives

4 tools to consider instead of LangSmith, shown against it.

LangSmith Langfuse Helicone Braintrust Portkey
Vendor LangChain Langfuse Helicone Braintrust Data Portkey
Pricing model Usage-based Free tier + paid plans Free tier + paid plans Usage-based Free tier + paid plans
Free tier Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Deployment Cloud, Self-hosted Cloud, Self-hosted Cloud, Self-hosted Cloud, Self-hosted Cloud, Self-hosted
Open source No Yes (MIT) Yes No Yes
Best for Teams already building on LangChain/LangGraph that want tracing and evaluation from the same vendor. Teams that want open-source tracing they can self-host for free and later scale onto a managed cloud plan. Teams that want low-friction, proxy-based logging of LLM API traffic without instrumenting application code deeply. Teams that want evaluation and experimentation as the primary workflow, with production monitoring layered on top. Teams that need a production LLM gateway (routing, fallbacks, guardrails) with logging built in, not just a tracing add-on.
Pricing

Free Developer tier includes a monthly trace allowance per seat, then usage-based charges for compute (LCU) and storage (LSU); Plus adds paid seats and deployment features; Enterprise is custom with self-hosted options.

Developer $0/seat/month
Plus $39/seat/month
Enterprise Custom

Prices read from the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026. Vendors change prices; check the source before you budget.

Free to self-host indefinitely; Langfuse Cloud has a free Hobby tier plus Core, Pro, and Enterprise monthly plans metered by observability units, with graduated per-unit overage pricing.

Hobby (Cloud) $0/month
Core (Cloud) $29/month
Pro (Cloud) $199/month
Enterprise (Cloud) $2,499/month

Prices read from the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026. Vendors change prices; check the source before you budget.

Free Hobby tier for a limited number of monthly requests; paid Pro and Team monthly plans add unlimited seats, longer retention, and compliance, with usage-based overage beyond the included request volume; Enterprise is custom with on-prem deployment.

Hobby $0/month
Pro $79/month
Team $799/month
Enterprise Custom

Prices read from the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026. Vendors change prices; check the source before you budget.

Free Starter tier includes a small credit and data allowance with per-unit overage; Pro adds a larger allowance plus a monthly platform fee; Enterprise is custom with on-prem/hosted deployment options.

Starter $0/month
Pro $249/month
Enterprise Custom

Prices read from the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026. Vendors change prices; check the source before you budget.

Open-source self-hosted gateway is free; hosted Developer tier is free but capped and not for production; Production is a monthly subscription with log-volume overage; Enterprise is custom with private/VPC deployment.

Open source (self-hosted) Free
Developer Free forever
Production $49/month
Enterprise Custom

Prices read from the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026. Vendors change prices; check the source before you budget.

Features
  • Full request tracing for chains, agents, and tool calls
  • Offline evaluation with datasets and regression test suites
  • Human annotation queues and LLM-as-judge scoring
  • Production monitoring dashboards and alerting
  • Prompt playground and prompt version management
  • Self-hosted and hybrid deployment on Enterprise
  • Distributed tracing for LLM calls, chains, and agent steps
  • Prompt management with versioning
  • Dataset-based evaluation with human, custom, or LLM-as-judge scoring
  • Production monitoring dashboards and cost tracking
  • Free, unlimited self-hosting via Docker Compose or Kubernetes
  • SDKs and OpenTelemetry-compatible instrumentation
  • Proxy or async-SDK based request logging
  • Custom query language (HQL) over logged requests
  • Cost and latency analytics across models and providers
  • Alerting and usage reports
  • Open-source, self-hostable core platform
  • SOC 2 & HIPAA compliance on higher tiers
  • Dataset-based experiments comparing prompt/model changes
  • Custom scoring functions applied both offline and in production
  • Production tracing and logging
  • Prompt playground for iterating against real examples
  • Side-by-side experiment comparison views
  • Role-based access control on paid tiers
  • Unified API gateway across multiple LLM providers
  • Automatic retries, fallbacks, and load balancing
  • Request/response logging with traces and custom metadata
  • Prompt template management and versioning
  • Guardrails for content and policy enforcement
  • Open-source, self-hostable gateway core

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