Chronosphere Application Observability

chronosphere.io

Free plan WebWindowsmacOSLinuxAPI

Spec score 9.0 #2 of 37 in Application Performance Monitoring

What it is

Chronosphere Application Observability is a cloud service for helping teams find and resolve problems in cloud-native applications and microservices. Chronosphere Lens creates service views aligned with an application’s architecture. Teams can use RED metrics and service-level objectives to understand performance and service dependencies, while metrics, logs, traces, and events are correlated with system changes and their effects. Distributed tracing maps request paths across components to help locate latency and inter-service communication issues. Dynamic trace sampling is offered to balance observability insight with cost. The service accepts open telemetry formats including Prometheus and OpenTelemetry. Listed alerting connections include Slack, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, VictorOps, email, and a general-purpose webhook. Pricing for the Observability Platform is based on useful data retained and customized for each organization; no price is listed. Pilots are typically free and average 2–3 weeks, though large-scale or long-term pilots may be paid. A free trial is offered, but there is no free plan. Customer support includes year-round, 24/7 communication through Slack, Zendesk, or email, with optional office hours and calls.

Spec sheet

What it does: Chronosphere provides cloud-native application observability for collecting, correlating and analyzing metrics, logs, traces and events.Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Purpose: Chronosphere provides observability for cloud-native applications and microservices to help teams detect and resolve issues.Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Intended users: The company describes Chronosphere as a business-to-business SaaS observability service trusted by teams from startups to Fortune 500 companies.Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Security: Chronosphere states that it is SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 audited and encrypts customer data at rest and in transit using TLS 1.2 or higher and AES 256.Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Support: Customer support includes 24/7 year-round communication through Slack, Zendesk, or email, plus optional office hours and calls.Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Headquarters: New York, New York, United StatesRead 28 Sep 2026 · chronosphere.io
Founded: 2019Read 28 Sep 2026 · chronosphere.io
Acquisition news: Palo Alto Networks announced on November 19, 2025 that it would acquire Chronosphere for $3.35 billion and reported Chronosphere ARR above $160 million at September 2025.Read 19 Oct 2026 · paloaltonetworks.com
AI investigations: AI Investigations reasons over topology, telemetry and incident signals to suggest likely root causes.Read 19 Oct 2026 · paloaltonetworks.com
AI Operator: AI Operator accepts natural-language requests to query telemetry, tune alerts and build dashboards.Read 19 Oct 2026 · paloaltonetworks.com
Alerting integrations: Chronosphere lists Slack, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, VictorOps, email, and a general-purpose webhook for paging and alerting.Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
API and CLI: Chronoctl is a public command-line wrapper for the Chronosphere API and manages resources with YAML or JSON.Read 19 Oct 2026 · github.com
API resources: Chronoctl supports dashboards, monitors, notification policies, recording rules, drop rules, teams and service accounts, among other resources.Read 19 Oct 2026 · github.com
Chronoctl licence: The public chronoctl-core repository is licensed Apache-2.0.Read 19 Oct 2026 · github.com
Company founding: LinkedIn lists Chronosphere’s founding year as 2019.Read 19 Oct 2026 · linkedin.com
Company size and headquarters: LinkedIn lists Chronosphere as privately held, headquartered in New York, with 201-500 employees.Read 19 Oct 2026 · linkedin.com
Current product branding: The former Chronosphere application-observability page now redirects to Palo Alto Networks Cortex XCOR application observability.Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Data formats: The platform ingests telemetry in open-source formats including Prometheus and OpenTelemetry.Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Differential diagnosis: Differential Diagnosis compares degraded telemetry with healthy baselines to identify state changes.Read 19 Oct 2026 · paloaltonetworks.com
Distributed tracing: Trace exploration maps request paths across microservices to expose latency and dependency problems.Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Documentation depth: Chronosphere documentation covers trace ingestion, querying, dashboards, alerts, linking, analysis and control workflows.Read 19 Oct 2026 · docs.chronosphere.io
Dynamic trace sampling: Dynamic head and tail sampling adjusts trace collection to preserve important data while controlling cost.Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
G2 implementation: G2 reports an average implementation time of five months based on 20 user reviews.Read 19 Oct 2026 · g2.com
Independent product classification: Gartner describes Chronosphere Platform as cloud-native monitoring software for collecting, storing and analyzing distributed-system metrics with querying, visualization and alerting.Read 19 Oct 2026 · gartner.com
Language support: OpenTelemetry compatibility covers Java, Go, Python, Node.js, .NET and Rust applications.Read 19 Oct 2026 · paloaltonetworks.com
Limit: Gartner reviewers: Gartner feedback includes concerns that costs can rise without telemetry-quality improvements and requests for more SLO-dashboard customization.Read 19 Oct 2026 · gartner.com
Limit: interface gaps: G2 reviewers mention difficult mobile use, unintuitive UI components and missing or incomplete cloud-provider and AWS Lambda integrations.Read 19 Oct 2026 · g2.com
Limit: pricing complexity: A G2 reviewer reported that processing and persistence costs were separate and that processing cost was not fully apparent during the proof of concept.Read 19 Oct 2026 · g2.com
Limit: PromQL learning curve: Multiple G2 reviewers say PromQL and the Prometheus data model take significant time to learn.Read 19 Oct 2026 · g2.com
Native SLOs: Native SLOs calculate real-time error-budget burn and alert when reliability targets are threatened.Read 19 Oct 2026 · paloaltonetworks.com
OpenTelemetry support: The XDOT Collector is built on OpenTelemetry and the product also supports the upstream OpenTelemetry Collector.Read 19 Oct 2026 · paloaltonetworks.com
Optimization engine: The current Cortex XCOR application-observability offering filters low-value logs, metrics and traces before storage.Read 19 Oct 2026 · paloaltonetworks.com
Pilot: Pilots are typically free and average 2–3 weeks, while large-scale or long-term pilots may be paid.Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Praise: Gartner reviewers: Gartner reviewer feedback praises reliability, responsive support and fine-grained administrative control over metrics, logs and traces.Read 19 Oct 2026 · gartner.com
Praise: scalability and cost control: G2 reviewers praise Prometheus-scale metrics handling, aggregation and controls that reduce stored data and cost.Read 19 Oct 2026 · g2.com
Praise: support: G2 reviewers repeatedly praise knowledgeable, responsive support during onboarding and ongoing operation.Read 19 Oct 2026 · g2.com
Pricing basis: Observability Platform pricing is based on useful data retained, and Chronosphere says it works with each organization to determine pricing.Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Pricing model: The observability platform charges mainly for data retained rather than hosts or virtual machines; Telemetry Pipeline pricing is based on throughput.Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Rating on Gartner Peer Insights: 4.6 out of 5 from 97 ratingsRead 19 Oct 2026 · gartner.com
RED metrics and SLOs: The product supports using RED metrics and SLOs to understand service performance and interdependencies.Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
RUM and synthetics: The product captures browser sessions and web vitals and correlates frontend events with distributed traces.Read 19 Oct 2026 · paloaltonetworks.com
Security compliance: Chronosphere states that it is SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 audited.Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Security controls: Customer data is encrypted in transit with TLS 1.2 or higher and at rest with AES-256.Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Service discovery: Automatic discovery maps APIs, dependencies and microservices and combines custom telemetry with RED metrics.Read 19 Oct 2026 · paloaltonetworks.com
Service views: Service-centric views align application architecture with RED metrics and service-level objectives.Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Support model: Chronosphere advertises 24/7/365 support through Slack, Zendesk or email plus dedicated customer-success and solution-architecture contacts.Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
System requirements: The public chronoctl build instructions require Go 1.26; the hosted platform itself has no published end-user hardware requirement.Read 19 Oct 2026 · github.com
Telemetry correlation: The platform links metrics, logs, traces and change events in one operational context.Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io
Trace sampling: Dynamic trace sampling is offered to balance observability insight with cost.Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io

Plans and prices

Chronosphere pilot Free Typically free; average pilot is 2–3 weeks. Large-scale or long-term pilots may be paid. Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io

Pilot Free Typically 2-3 weeks Production-data evaluation · longer pilots may be paid Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io

Chronosphere Observability Platform Priced on request Contact Chronosphere for a customized price. Price is based on useful data retained; pricing varies by organization. Read 9 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io

Custom enterprise subscription Priced on request Usage-based; primarily by retained observability data, with ingestion fee Metrics, logs, traces and events · custom retention and aggregation Read 19 Oct 2026 · chronosphere.io

Every Chronosphere Application Observability plan and price →

Strong points and limits

Strong points

Correlates metrics, logs, traces, and events.
Ingests Prometheus and OpenTelemetry formats.
Dynamic trace sampling balances insight and cost.
Typically free pilots average 2–3 weeks.

Limits

No free plan is available.
Platform pricing is customized and not listed.
Large-scale or long-term pilots may be paid.

Who it suits

It suits teams responsible for cloud-native applications and microservices that need service-level views, correlated telemetry, and distributed tracing. Pricing is tailored to each organization, and pilots may be paid when large-scale or long-term.

Verdict

Chronosphere brings service views, telemetry correlation, tracing, and alerting integrations into a cloud observability service. A free trial and typically free short pilots are available, but ongoing pricing requires a customized quote.