SupraWall vs
Helicone
Comparing Proxy-Level Cost tracking vs SDK-Level Agent Budgets.
Helicone
The industry standard for **LLM Observability**. Excellent at cost tracking, caching, and request/response logging via a smart proxy. Best for seeing your API bill.
- Proxy-Based Monitoring
- Prompt Caching
- Simple Integration
SupraWall
The **Agentic Security Layer**. In addition to cost tracking, we provide runtime interception and deterministic policy enforcement for your agent's external actions.
- Decision Blocking
- Permission Guardrails
- Human approvals
Technical Breakdown
| Policy Control | Helicone | SupraWall |
|---|---|---|
| Action Blocking | Helicone monitors requests; SupraWall intercepts and blocks tool execution. | |
| Per-Agent Budget | Soft Track | Hard Caps SupraWall sets deterministic dollar limits per agent identity. |
| Human Approvals | Pause high-stakes actions in SupraWall; Helicone is fully automated observability. | |
| EU AI Act Ready | Ops-First | Compliance-First SupraWall specifically fulfills Art. 9, 12, and 14 requirements. |
| LLM Caching | Helicone excels at prompt caching; SupraWall focuses on runtime security. |
Why proxies aren't enough for security
Proxies like Helicone live in the "in-between." They see the request from the app and the model's response. This is perfect for seeing what an agent is *thinking* about doing. However, in an agentic workflow, the model's response is just instructions to a tool. The security risk happens downstream, when those instructions are executed against a database or filesystem.
Because SupraWall lives in the SDK itself, we can intercept the tool call at the moment of execution, *after* the model has processed the request but *before* the damage occurs. Proxies are blind to these side-effects.
Hard budget caps for autonomous loops
If an agent enters an infinite loop, Helicone will show you that cost is accelerating, but it won't stop the loop. SupraWall implements **Hard Budget Caps**. You can define a dollar limit for an agent profile (e.g. $5.00/session). The moment the agent reaches that limit, SupraWall blocks all subsequent actions, saving your budget automatically.