Helicone Sessions — Group LLM Calls by User Conversation

Quick Use

1. Sign up at helicone.ai → copy API key
2. Switch your LLM SDK base_url to https://oai.helicone.ai/v1 (or anthropic.helicone.ai etc)
3. Add Helicone-Session-Id header — every matching call is grouped

Intro

Helicone Sessions group LLM calls that belong to the same user conversation, agent run, or workflow under one session ID. Trace a multi-step agent end-to-end, see total cost / latency / token usage, and visualize the conversation as a tree. Best for: multi-turn agents, RAG pipelines with intermediate calls, anywhere you'd otherwise lose the context of which call belonged to which run. Works with: Helicone Cloud + self-hosted, any OpenAI / Anthropic SDK. Setup time: 2 minutes.

Tag a session

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://oai.helicone.ai/v1",
    default_headers={
        "Helicone-Auth": f"Bearer {HELICONE_KEY}",
        "Helicone-Session-Id": "session_abc123",
        "Helicone-Session-Name": "support_ticket_4521",
        "Helicone-Session-Path": "/triage/research/respond",
    },
)

# Each call inside this session is grouped together
client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4o",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Help me triage ticket #4521"}],
)

Multiple calls with the same Helicone-Session-Id aggregate in the dashboard.

Path-based hierarchy

# Top-level: triage
client.chat.completions.create(
    extra_headers={"Helicone-Session-Path": "/triage"},
    ...
)

# Sub-step: classify intent
client.chat.completions.create(
    extra_headers={"Helicone-Session-Path": "/triage/classify"},
    ...
)

# Sub-step: generate response
client.chat.completions.create(
    extra_headers={"Helicone-Session-Path": "/triage/respond"},
    ...
)

The dashboard renders the path as a tree, so you see the agent's decision flow.

Why use Sessions vs raw logs

FAQ

Q: Is Helicone Sessions free? A: Yes — Sessions are part of the Helicone free tier (10K requests/month). Paid plans add longer retention and higher quotas. Self-hosted Helicone supports Sessions natively.

Q: Do I need to change my SDK? A: No — Helicone is a proxy. Switch your OpenAI / Anthropic / etc base URL to Helicone's, add the Helicone-Auth header. Sessions are opt-in via additional headers.

Q: Can I use Sessions with Anthropic Claude? A: Yes — Helicone proxies Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Bedrock, OpenRouter. Set base URL to https://anthropic.helicone.ai, pass the same Helicone-Session-* headers.

Source & Thanks

Built by Helicone. Licensed under Apache-2.0.

Helicone/helicone — ⭐ 4,000+