Alternative
Helicone is a middleman. MarginDash is a sidecar. One sits in your request path — the other doesn't.
Looking for an alternative to Helicone that tracks per-customer profitability instead of request traces? MarginDash is an async SDK that sends only metadata — no proxy, no prompts, no latency added — and connects your AI costs to actual Stripe revenue so you can see which customers are profitable.
| Feature | Helicone | MarginDash |
|---|---|---|
| Request logging/tracing | Full traces | No (metadata only) |
| Revenue/margin per customer | Not available | |
| Stripe revenue sync | Not available | |
| Cost tracking | ||
| Profit-leak alerts | Not available | |
| Cost simulator w/ intelligence ranking | Not available | |
| Architecture | Gateway proxy | Async SDK |
| Network latency added | Extra hop per request | Zero — async |
| Privacy (no prompts sent) | Opt-in | By default |
| Caching/rate limiting | Not needed (no proxy) |
No credit card required
Helicone calculates cost from token counts — an estimate. It doesn't know your Stripe coupons, your tiered pricing, or your annual credits. MarginDash syncs with your actual Stripe invoices to show the realized cost and margin per customer. That's the difference between a dashboard and a P&L.
Helicone is a gateway proxy — every AI request routes through their servers, adding latency to every call. If Helicone goes down, your AI features go down. MarginDash uses an async SDK that sends only metadata after each call. Zero latency added. Zero downtime risk. No prompts ever leave your servers.
With Helicone, your full prompts and completions pass through their proxy by default. You can opt in to redaction, but it requires configuration and trust. MarginDash never sees your prompts, period. We receive model names and token counts — the minimum needed to calculate cost. Your data stays where it belongs: on your servers.
If you need request-level tracing, prompt caching, rate limiting, or detailed per-request debugging, and you're okay routing all traffic through a proxy, Helicone does that well. Choose MarginDash when your primary question is "are my customers profitable?" rather than "what did this request look like?"
No credit card required
The metric that matters
Other tools estimate cost from tokens. MarginDash reconciles actual Stripe revenue against AI costs — accounting for coupons, tiered pricing, and annual credits. You see who's profitable and who's underwater.
| Customer | Revenue | Cost | Margin | Margin % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plexo Health | $233.25 | $277.20 | -$43.95 | -18.8% |
| Vantage Ops | $358.86 | $421.66 | -$62.80 | -17.5% |
| Stratos Cloud | $417.32 | $357.64 | $59.68 | 14.3% |
| Canopy Labs | $350.89 | $316.85 | $34.04 | 9.7% |
| Prism Data | $105.80 | $87.23 | $18.57 | 17.6% |
Other tools estimate cost from tokens. MarginDash reconciles cost against actual revenue. Pass revenueAmountInCents and see realized margin — not guesswork.
// After your existing AI call
md.addUsage({ vendor: "openai", model: response.model,
inputTokens: response.usage.prompt_tokens,
outputTokens: response.usage.completion_tokens });
md.track({
customerId: user.id,
eventType: "summarize",
revenueAmountInCents: subscription.amount
});Create an account, install the SDK, and see your first margin data in minutes.
See My Margin DataNo credit card required