Honest comparison
Most LLM tools focus on observability and tracing. Tozil focuses on one thing: knowing what every AI user costs you.
| Feature | Tozil | Langfuse | Helicone | LangSmith |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus | Per-user cost attribution | LLM observability | LLM gateway / proxy | LLM dev platform |
| Pricing | $0 — $99/mo | Free + $59/mo | Free + custom | Free + $39/seat |
| Setup | 2 lines of code | SDK + dashboard | Proxy config | SDK + platform |
| Open Source SDK | ✓ | ✓ | Partial | ✕ |
| Prompts sent to server | Never | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Per-user cost tracking | Native | Manual tagging | Manual tagging | Manual tagging |
| Framework support | Anthropic, OpenAI, Vercel AI, LangChain, Gemini | Most LLM providers | OpenAI-compatible | LangChain ecosystem |
| Anomaly alerts | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ | ✕ |
| Self-hostable | ✕ | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Fails silently | Always | Configurable | N/A (proxy) | Configurable |
Last updated March 2026. We try to keep this accurate — let us know if something's wrong.
Different tools solve different problems. Here's what makes us different.
Every other tool on this list sends your prompts and completions to their servers. We don't. We only capture metadata: model, tokens, latency. Your data stays yours.
Most tools show you total spend. Tozil shows you who's spending it. Know which users, endpoints, and models drive your costs — and which plans are profitable.
2 lines of code to install. Fails silently if our API is down. Zero added latency. No proxy to configure. Uninstall cleanly by removing the import.
We believe in being upfront. Here's when you should look elsewhere.
You need full LLM tracing and debugging — Use Langfuse or LangSmith. They capture full request/response chains, which is essential for debugging complex agent workflows.
You want to self-host everything — Langfuse is fully open source and self-hostable. Tozil is a managed service (our SDK is open source, but the dashboard isn't).
You need a gateway/proxy architecture — Helicone routes traffic through their proxy for caching, rate limiting, and retries. Tozil is an SDK, not a proxy.
2 lines of code. No prompts sent. Free to start.
No credit card. No commitment. Setup in 2 minutes.