Alternative to
6 Alternatives to Langfuse in 2026
Langfuse is an open source LLM tracing and evaluation platform, and people compare it with others when retention, ownership or billing units do not suit them. In January 2026 the Langfuse team joined ClickHouse, which some buyers want to understand before committing. Common destinations are Arize Phoenix, Opik and LangSmith.
Why people look for an alternative to Langfuse
Retention is tied to the tier
Hobby lets you look back 30 days, while Core stretches to 90 and Pro reaches 3 years. A team wanting six months of traces finds the $29 Core tier too short, and the $199 Pro tier is the next step.
Billing is in units
Core covers 100k units each month, then adds $8 for every further 100k, dropping to $6 once you pass 50M units. Traces, observations and scores are all counted, so a week of real traffic is needed before the bill can be forecast.
Ownership has shifted
Langfuse's about page states that, as of January 2026, the team is part of ClickHouse. The word acquisition is absent there, and no legal entity or headquarters is named, which may push buyers with vendor-review rules toward another route.
The best Langfuse alternatives
- 1
Arize Phoenix
Arize Phoenix is open source, starts locally with one command and can also be self-hosted. Its managed Arize AX Free and Pro tiers list unlimited users and evals; traces are retained 15 days on Free, and 30 days on Pro, which is $50 a month.
Switch if you Switch when a locally run, open source trace viewer is your starting point, a managed tier can wait, and short retention is fine.
- 2
Comet Opik offers an open source option, plus a Pro Cloud plan at $19 a month that includes 100k spans and up to 50 members. Retention is capped at 60 days on Free and Pro Cloud, and single sign-on is reserved for Enterprise.
Switch if you Switch when you want a paid entry point below Langfuse Core and an open source fallback.
- 3
LangChain, Inc. makes LangSmith. The plan page prices Plus at $39 per seat a month and lists unlimited seats; base traces stay 14 days, extended traces 180 days. We got 404 errors on its trust pages, so no certification could be confirmed.
Switch if you Switch when your agents already run on LangChain or LangGraph and one product should cover evals, alerts and deployment.
- 4
Helicone
Helicone pairs request logging with a gateway that handles caching, rate limits and automatic fallbacks. The free Hobby plan allows 10,000 requests with 7-day data; Pro costs $79 a month plus usage, and SOC 2 plus HIPAA arrive with Team. Docs describe self-hosting on AWS, GCP and Azure.
Switch if you Switch when a gateway with caching and fallbacks should sit in front of your model calls, beyond tracing alone.
- 5
Braintrust makes evaluation a release gate and bundles datasets, scorers and traces together. Starter is free with 1 GB processed data. Pro is $249 a month with 30-day data retention, and the data plane can sit in your own cloud.
Switch if you Switch when comparing experiments before every release counts for more than a low entry price.
- 6
Portkey acts as a gateway across many model vendors and attaches logs, guardrails and budgets. The Developer plan is free, keeping 10k logs for 3 days; Production is $49 a month with 100k logs. Guaranteed data residency requires Enterprise.
Switch if you Switch when routing, budgets and guardrails over several model providers come first and tracing is secondary.
Before you switch away from Langfuse
First decide what you will carry across. Prompts with versions, datasets, annotation queues and evaluator setups all live in Langfuse, and other tools do not always map them one to one, so export datasets and prompt text before anything else. Then list your SDKs: Python and TypeScript are native, other languages go through OpenTelemetry, which also makes moving traces easier. A self-hosted Langfuse suggests the replacement should be self-hostable too. Audits named on its security page are ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II; request current reports of similar standing from each candidate. Whether Langfuse trains on customer data is not stated on the pages we read.
The full ranking of this category is in Best LLM Observability Tools in 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Is Langfuse still independent after joining ClickHouse?
Per the about page, the Langfuse team is part of ClickHouse as of January 2026. No acquisition is mentioned, no rename is stated and no legal entity is named, so we cannot say how ownership terms changed. If procurement needs the contracting party, put that question to the vendor.
Which Langfuse alternatives can I self-host?
Arize Phoenix can be self-hosted and runs locally. Opik has an open source option. Helicone's docs cover AWS, GCP and Azure, while Braintrust can place a data plane in your own cloud. Langfuse itself has MIT-licensed features and ships for Docker Compose, Helm and Terraform.
What is the cheapest paid step above Langfuse Core?
By list price, Comet Opik Pro Cloud at $19 a month undercuts Langfuse Core at $29, and Portkey Production comes in at $49. Spans, logs and units are different measures, so a cheaper sticker price may still cost more at your volume. Test with one week of real traffic.
Does Langfuse have EU hosting, and do the alternatives?
According to its security page, Langfuse Cloud runs in US, EU (Ireland, eu-west-1) and Japan regions. LangSmith's page names GCP us-central-1 for hosted data, and its trust pages were unavailable. We did not check region choice in the other vendors' policies, so confirm it before counting on EU storage.