A Helicone alternative when you want cost alerts, not a proxy

Pick the tool for the job. Observability platforms log prompts and latency. TryTokka is intentionally narrower: dollars, models, and alerts.

Indie teams often want that narrower scope — fewer moving parts, encrypted keys, and a 7-day trial with no card.

Helicone (and similar proxies) earn their keep when you need request-level traces, prompt logging, or gateway features. Those strengths become overhead when your only pain is “which API burned the budget this week?”

TryTokka never sits in the request path. It reads usage/billing endpoints with encrypted keys, syncs on a daily cadence (or Sync now), and emails when your Scout threshold trips after that check.

You can keep Helicone for observability and add TryTokka for spend — or replace a cost-only Helicone setup with a dedicated spend monitor. Choose based on whether you need traces or invoices.