Moving cost tracking from Helicone to Veqen

Replace a proxy-based setup with in-process cost tracking, and map Helicone properties and user ids to Veqen tags.

By Keyveve, Inc. · Updated 2026-10-22

Helicone tracks cost by routing requests through its proxy and reading custom headers. Veqen works in your process instead: there's no base URL to change and no extra hop for each request.

1. Remove the proxy

# Before
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://oai.helicone.ai/v1",
                default_headers={"Helicone-Auth": f"Bearer {HELICONE_API_KEY}"})

# After
import veqen
veqen.init(api_key=VEQEN_API_KEY)  # or set VEQEN_API_KEY; without a key, set ledger_file= to keep a local ledger
client = veqen.wrap(OpenAI())

2. Map headers to tags

Headers are set per request; tags are set once per request context and apply to every call inside it, so most call sites need no change at all.

3. Keep what you rely on

• Spend history. Connect your OpenAI or Anthropic admin key: Veqen imports the last 30 days of billed cost by model, so dashboards aren't empty on day one.
• Rate limits and caching that ran in the proxy belong in your app or a gateway; Veqen doesn't sit in the request path.
• Prompt logs aren't part of Veqen, which never sees prompts or responses. Keep your tracing tool for that.

What you gain

Exact prices with every billing rule, budgets the SDK enforces before a call is made, reconciliation against the invoice, margin per customer, and journal entries for finance.