Comparison · Gateway and logging
Moda vs Helicone
Helicone is a Rust-based AI gateway plus request-level observability (sessions, prompts, user analytics, alerts). In March 2026 Helicone was acquired by Mintlify, and the standalone product moved into maintenance mode — Experiments was deprecated in September 2025, and no new feature work is shipping. For teams evaluating an active analytics product, Helicone is no longer the right fit; for gateway-only needs the OSS Rust gateway continues to ship.
When to use Moda
When the question is what users want, where the agent fails behaviorally, and why users get frustrated — and when you need a product that's still receiving feature investment.
When to use Helicone
If you specifically need a routable Rust gateway across many providers with failover, caching, and rate limiting — and accept that the analytics side is now in maintenance mode.
Updated
Feature by feature
Moda compared with Helicone
| Capability | Moda | Helicone |
|---|---|---|
| Product status | Active; weekly product investment. | Acquired by Mintlify (March 2026); standalone product in maintenance mode. |
| Layer of the stack | Conversation analytics. | Gateway + request logging + basic dashboards. |
| Sessions | Automatic segmentation of conversations into 3-level intent taxonomy. | Manual grouping via `Helicone-Session-Id` / `-Path` / `-Name` headers. |
| Intent clustering | Automatic, on ingest, no taxonomies to author. | Not provided. |
| Behavioral failure detection | Named taxonomy: tool misuse, context loss, agent laziness, hallucination, reasoning loops, goal drift. | HTTP-level error tracking; "Threats" surfaces anomalous user activity. |
| Frustration root cause | Trigger, trajectory, affected goal, agent counterfactual per event. | Not provided. |
| Open source | Hosted; OSS SDKs. | Apache-2.0 gateway is OSS; hosted dashboards available. |
Highlights
What the comparison surfaces
Different layers
Helicone's gateway is the pipe; Moda is the conversation analytics on top. The layers are compatible.
Active vs maintenance
Helicone is no longer receiving feature investment as a standalone product. For teams choosing a vendor today, this materially changes the picture.
Frequently asked
Questions
Is Helicone still a usable product?
The gateway side continues to ship. The hosted analytics surface is in maintenance mode following the Mintlify acquisition in March 2026, and Experiments was deprecated in September 2025. Teams evaluating analytics today should treat that as a hard signal.
Can I use Helicone's gateway with Moda?
Yes. Forward Helicone request data via OpenTelemetry; Moda processes the conversation-level signal on top.
Does Moda offer a gateway?
No. Moda ingests from your runtime — we don't proxy LLM provider calls. If you need a routable gateway, pair Moda with whatever gateway you already use.
See how Moda complements Helicone.
Book a 30-minute walkthrough. We'll show your traffic in Moda end-to-end and where it fits next to the rest of your stack.