FiscaLLM vs Helicone

Both help you see what AI costs per user. The difference is what they compare it with, what they cost, and where your data lives. Checked on 2026-11-02 from Helicone's public page; we make FiscaLLM, so tell us if anything about Helicone is out of date.

	FiscaLLM	Helicone
What it is	AI cost per user joined to real revenue: margin per user, plan and free trial	Open-source LLM observability through a gateway or proxy
Price	Free. Hosted with fair use (100,000 events per app per month), or self-hosted with no limit	Free tier; paid hosted plans
Hosting	Hosted or self-hosted	Hosted or self-hosted
Open source	Yes, MIT (server, dashboard and SDKs)	Yes
Revenue used for margin	Real revenue from RevenueCat (one-click connect and import), Stripe (webhook and 12-month import, beta, USD), CSV upload, or a revenue API	Tracks cost per user through request headers, but does not import subscription revenue to compute margin

Where Helicone is strong

Gateway with caching, retries and rate limits
Request logging and dashboards
One-line proxy setup

Pick Helicone if you want a gateway in front of your AI provider with logging and caching. FiscaLLM needs no proxy and adds revenue and margin per user.

Why teams pick FiscaLLM

Free and open source. MIT, with the server, dashboard and SDKs in one repository. No per-event or per-seat price.
Self-hostable. Run it on your own Vercel and Postgres so revenue and usage data never leave your infrastructure.
Real revenue, from where you bill. One-click RevenueCat for App Store and Google Play apps, Stripe with 12 months of history, CSV upload, or a revenue API.
Margin per user, plan and free trial, with alerts when a paying user starts losing you money, and optional per-user caps.
Never sees prompts. Only user IDs, model names and token counts. Reporting never blocks or slows your app.

Open the demo dashboard (sample data, no sign-up), read the docs, or start free. All comparisons: AI cost per user tools compared.

Questions

Is FiscaLLM a free Helicone alternative?

Yes. FiscaLLM is free and open source (MIT): use the hosted service at fiscallm.com or run your own copy. Helicone: Free tier; paid hosted plans.

Can I use FiscaLLM and Helicone together?

Yes. FiscaLLM only needs one tracking call after each AI request and a revenue source, so it runs next to other tools.