Helicone logs your LLM calls and offers caching. aiusage routes your Claude calls through a proxy that *actually* drops your bill 60-90%. Overlap: caching. Difference: we optimize cost; they optimize visibility.
dashboards, request-level tracing, user-level attribution.
Drop-in proxy for Claude (and GPT, Grok). One env var, cache + route + 60-90% cheaper. Your keys stay yours. Built-in features (Flywheel, Test Links, QA on Server, Agent) all bill from one runs balance.
Helicone strength: dashboards, request-level tracing, user-level attribution.
Helicone weakness (for our use case): doesn't materially cut your Anthropic bill — it watches it.
aiusage strength: material bill-cutting, instant setup, per-run pricing.
aiusage weakness: we do not try to be an LLM ops platform — if you need the full Helicone feature set, we will never compete on that.
| Tool | Price | What you actually pay |
|---|---|---|
| Helicone | $0-$499/mo + your full Anthropic bill | Helicone tier + your full Anthropic bill on top |
| aiusage | pay-per-run, average 60-90% off your Anthropic bill | One runs balance. No seat fees. No subscription. |
you need SRE-grade LLM observability across 10+ models.
you want your Claude bill to be 10x smaller next month.
Yes. Point Helicone at aiusage base URL instead of api.anthropic.com. You get Helicone observability/ops layer AND aiusage caching + cost optimization. Takes one env var change.
ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://aiusage.ai ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=<your existing key>