Beacon vs PromptUnit

Beacon and PromptUnit are both inference engines & infra tracked by AIDiveForge. Below is a side-by-side comparison of pricing, capabilities, platforms, and ownership — sourced from each tool's live website and verified before publishing.

Beacon

Beacon is an open-source endpoint telemetry layer that runs locally alongside AI agents, capturing prompts, tool calls, file modifications, and approval workflows before any of that activity disappears into the void. It normalizes that telemetry and forwards it to SIEM platforms like Wazuh, Elastic, or Splunk, so security teams can apply the same detection logic they already run against the rest of the fleet. The architecture is self-hosted by design — no data leaves the endpoint unless you route it there yourself. The project is early-stage; the plugin ecosystem covers the major local agent harnesses but gaps exist for less common runtimes. Teams with agents not yet on the supported list write custom collector plugins — which means more surface area to maintain.

PromptUnit

AI proxy that automatically routes requests to cheaper models while maintaining quality.

Attribute	Beacon	PromptUnit
Pricing	Free	Paid
Price	—	20% of verified savings
Free trial	No	14 days
Open source	Yes	No
Has API	No	Yes
Self-hosted option	Yes	No
Platforms	Linux, macOS, Windows	Cloud-based
Pros	Runs entirely on the local endpoint with no external data forwarding required, so organizations in regulated industries can capture AI agent telemetry without breaching data residency requirements. Normalizes agent activity into structured telemetry compatible with Wazuh, Elastic, and Splunk, so security teams can write detection rules against AI agent behavior using the same tooling they already maintain for the rest of the infrastructure. Captures the full activity chain — prompts, tool calls, file edits, approval workflows — which means audit trails hold up when a compliance team asks exactly what an agent touched and when, rather than reconstructing context after the fact. MIT-licensed and free with no paid tier, so there is no licensing negotiation before a regulated-industry proof of concept, and the full source is auditable by the security team before deployment. Structured for MDM-managed deployments, so enterprise IT teams can push Beacon alongside agent runtimes through existing device management pipelines rather than requiring manual per-machine setup.	No code changes required; works with existing SDKs Performance-based pricing means savings are shared with vendor 14-day free observation period before routing goes live Real-time cost breakdown by model, feature, and user Explains routing decisions for transparency
Cons	Plugin coverage is scoped to the major local agent harnesses the project explicitly supports; agents running on runtimes outside that list produce no telemetry until a custom collector plugin is written and maintained — which delays security coverage for any team adopting a newer or less common agent framework. There is no hosted dashboard or managed backend, which means the security team owns the full stack: endpoint deployment, SIEM routing, schema mapping, and alert logic. Teams without an operational SIEM who want a turnkey monitoring UI will abandon Beacon for a hosted observability product before the first sprint ends. The project carries a small contributor base at the time of publication; teams depending on active maintenance for fast-moving agent runtimes accept the risk that plugin support lags runtime updates, requiring internal engineering to bridge the gap or switch to a vendor with a dedicated support contract.	Adds median 41ms latency to API calls Requires observation period before realizing savings

Bottom line

Beacon is free while PromptUnit is paid; Beacon is open source; only PromptUnit exposes a public API. Choose based on which difference matters most for your workflow.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Beacon and PromptUnit?

Beacon is Free and open source, while PromptUnit is Paid. Compare pricing, free trial, API, platforms, and pros/cons in the table above on AIDiveForge.

Is Beacon better than PromptUnit?

It depends on your workflow. Use the side-by-side attributes (pricing, open source, API, self-hosted, platforms) to decide. AIDiveForge does not rank a universal winner — we publish verified facts so you can choose.