Comparison
BlockRun vs Helicone
They solve different problems. BlockRun is a payment gateway: you call BlockRun and it pays the upstream provider for you. Helicone is an observability proxy: you call OpenAI/Anthropic/etc. through Helicone and it logs every request. Many teams use both.
Side-by-side
| Feature | BlockRun | Helicone |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Pay providers on your behalf | Log + analyze your LLM calls |
| Pays the upstream provider? | Yes | No (you still bring your own provider keys) |
| Billing | Pay-per-call USDC over x402 | Free tier + paid tiers based on log volume |
| Auth | Wallet signature per call | API key (passes through your provider key) |
| Observability | Basic metrics + on-chain receipts | Deep — request logs, prompt diffs, costs, latencies |
| Caching | No | Optional |
| Free models | Yes, no signup | N/A — you bring your own provider |
| Multi-provider routing | Yes (one OpenAI-compatible endpoint) | No (Helicone is per-provider) |
| MCP Server | Yes (10 tools) | No |
When to choose BlockRun
- You don't want to manage provider API keys at all.
- You're building agents that pay per-call from a wallet.
- You want one OpenAI-compatible endpoint in front of 55+ models.
- You need data + media + compute APIs alongside chat.
When to choose Helicone
- You already have direct provider relationships and API keys.
- You need deep request logging, prompt diffing, and cost analytics.
- You want to debug specific LLM responses with full traces.
- You don't need a payment layer — billing already works for you.
Use them together
They're not mutually exclusive. You can route BlockRun calls through Helicone if you want both: pay-per-call USDC settlement on the front end, deep request observability on the back. Set Helicone as your HTTP proxy and point your BlockRun SDK base URL through it.
The bottom line
Different layers of the stack. BlockRun is the payment + routing layer. Helicone is the observability layer. Pick the one that solves your bigger problem first; add the other when you need it.
If something on this page is wrong, email hello@blockrun.ai.