Langfuse vs Prompt flow
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted self-hosted ai options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Langfuse
Open-source observability and analytics for LLM apps
VS
Prompt flow
Build and evaluate LLM application flows
| Feature | Langfuse | Prompt flow |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 98 · Excellent | 78 · Good |
| Category | Self-Hosted AI | Self-Hosted AI |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Language | TypeScript | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 2,048 MB | 2,048 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 34,989 | ★ 11,244 |
| First released | 2023 | 2023 |
| Replaces | LangSmith | LangSmith, Vertex AI |
What are Langfuse and Prompt flow?
Langfuse
Langfuse is an open-source platform for tracing, evaluating, and monitoring LLM applications. It captures detailed traces, manages prompts, and provides analytics dashboards for production AI systems.
- LLM tracing and analytics
- Prompt management
- Evaluation tooling
- Self-hostable
Prompt flow
Prompt flow is an open-source development toolkit from Microsoft for building, testing, and evaluating LLM-powered applications. It provides a visual flow editor, batch evaluation, and tooling to debug prompt pipelines locally.
- Visual flow authoring
- Batch evaluation runs
- Local debugging tools
- VS Code extension
Langfuse vs Prompt flow: key differences
Langfuse is written in TypeScript, while Prompt flow is built with Python. Langfuse has the considerably larger community, at 34,989 GitHub stars versus 11,244.
Why pick each one
Choose Langfuse if…
- Detailed LLM tracing
- Prompt management built in
- Many SDK integrations
Watch out for
- ClickHouse and Redis required
- Some features enterprise
Choose Prompt flow if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 11.2k GitHub stars
- Written in Python
Frequently asked questions
Is Langfuse or Prompt flow better?
Neither is universally better. Langfuse has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Langfuse and Prompt flow free and open-source?
Yes. Langfuse is licensed under MIT and Prompt flow under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Langfuse and Prompt flow with Docker?
Langfuse: yes. Prompt flow: yes.