— Developer Tools

Langfuse

Last updated June 24, 2026 · Reviewed by ToolForge Editorial

Open-source LLM observability. Trace every prompt, track costs, evaluate quality. The analytics platform for AI applications.

★ 4.7/5 · 50K+ developers · Since 2023 · Free tier (50K events/mo)
$0 Free tier (50K events/mo)
Try Langfuse → Read full review

Why Langfuse became the standard for LLM observability

If you're shipping LLM-powered features to production without observability, you're flying blind. Langfuse gives you request tracing, cost tracking, and quality evaluations in one place — and it's open-source, so you can self-host or use the cloud version.

Who it's for: Engineering teams building production AI applications. Especially those using LangChain or LlamaIndex who need visibility into multi-step agent workflows.

Key features

Trace Request tracing

Automatically traces every LLM call — prompts, completions, latency, tokens, cost. Follows multi-step chains across agents and tools. One-line integration with LangChain, LlamaIndex, and vanilla SDKs.

Eval Evaluations

Run automated evals on model outputs. Use LLM-as-judge, regex, or custom scorers. Compare models, prompts, and configurations over time with built-in dashboards.

Cost Cost tracking

Real-time cost breakdowns by model, user, feature, and time period. Set budgets and alerts. The CFO-friendly way to manage AI spending across your organization.

Prompt Prompt management

Version-control prompts outside your codebase. A/B test prompt variations. Roll back to previous versions instantly without redeploying your application.

The honest take

✓ What works

  • Open-source — self-host or use the cloud version
  • Free tier is generous (50K events/month)
  • Works with any LLM provider — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, local models
  • One-line integration for LangChain and LlamaIndex
  • Prompt versioning alone is worth the setup

✗ What doesn't

  • Self-hosting requires PostgreSQL and some DevOps knowledge
  • Dashboard UI can feel overwhelming at first — lots of data
  • Advanced features (datasets, experiments) have a learning curve
  • No built-in guardrails or content moderation

Verdict

Langfuse gives you traces, costs, and evaluations in one place. It's free to start, open-source, and integrates in minutes. Every AI application team should have this or something like it. The prompt versioning alone justifies the setup time.

💡 Transparency: This review contains affiliate links. If you sign up through our link, we may earn a commission at no cost to you. We only recommend tools we use ourselves. Full disclosure.

Related Tools

Try Langfuse today

Free tier · 50K events/month · Open-source

Get Langfuse →