# Observability for Helicone with Opik

> Learn how to integrate Helicone with Opik to log and monitor your LLM traffic using the standard Helicone integration setup.

[Helicone](https://www.helicone.ai/) is an open-source LLM observability platform that provides monitoring, logging, and analytics for LLM applications. It acts as a proxy layer between your application and LLM providers, offering features like request logging, caching, rate limiting, and cost tracking.

## Gateway Overview

Helicone provides a comprehensive observability layer for LLM applications with features including:

* **Unified API**: OpenAI-compatible API with access to 100+ models through Helicone's model registry
* **Intelligent Routing**: Automatic failures and fallbacks across providers to ensure reliability
* **No Rate Limits**: Skip provider tier restrictions with zero markup on credits
* **Request Logging**: Automatic logging of all LLM requests and responses
* **Caching**: Reduce costs and improve latency with semantic caching
* **Cost Tracking**: Monitor spending across different models and providers with unified observability
* **Multi-Provider Support**: Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure OpenAI, and more

## Account Setup

[Comet](https://www.comet.com/site?from=llm\&utm_source=opik\&utm_medium=colab\&utm_content=helicone\&utm_campaign=opik) provides a hosted version of the Opik platform. [Simply create an account](https://www.comet.com/signup?from=llm\&utm_source=opik\&utm_medium=colab\&utm_content=helicone\&utm_campaign=opik) and grab your API Key.

> You can also run the Opik platform locally, see the [installation guide](https://www.comet.com/docs/opik/self-host/overview/?from=llm\&utm_source=opik\&utm_medium=colab\&utm_content=helicone\&utm_campaign=opik) for more information.

## Getting Started

### Installation

First, ensure you have both `opik` and `openai` packages installed:

```bash
pip install opik openai
```

### Configuring Opik

Configure the Opik Python SDK for your deployment type. See the [Python SDK Configuration guide](/tracing/sdk_configuration) for detailed instructions on:

* **CLI configuration**: `opik configure`
* **Code configuration**: `opik.configure()`
* **Self-hosted vs Cloud vs Enterprise** setup
* **Configuration files** and environment variables

### Configuring Helicone

You'll need a Helicone API key. You can get one by signing up at [Helicone](https://www.helicone.ai/).

Set your API key as an environment variable:

```bash
export HELICONE_API_KEY="YOUR_HELICONE_API_KEY"
```

Or set it programmatically:

```python
import os
import getpass

if "HELICONE_API_KEY" not in os.environ:
    os.environ["HELICONE_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter your Helicone API key: ")

```

## Logging LLM Calls

Since Helicone provides an OpenAI-compatible proxy, we can use the [Opik OpenAI SDK wrapper](/docs/opik/integrations/openai) to automatically log Helicone calls as generations in Opik.

### Simple LLM Call

```python
import os
from opik.integrations.openai import track_openai
from openai import OpenAI