Apache SkyWalking vs Google Cloud Trace
Apache SkyWalking
skywalking.apache.org
Google Cloud Trace
cloud.google.comSide by side
| Figure | Apache SkyWalking | Google Cloud Trace |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $0.20/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Application Performance Monitoring | 8.4 (#7) | 7.7 (#25) |
| Spec score · Distributed Tracing Tools | 8.4 (#7) | 7.8 (#14) |
| Spec score · Runtime Monitoring Software | 8.3 (#19) | 7.6 (#30) |
| Integrations | The site identifies OpenTelemetry OTLP, Istio, Envoy, Kubernetes, Grafana, and MCP among its integrations and ecosystem projects. | Cloud Logging entries can be associated with traces and spans, and displayed alongside trace waterfall graphs or in Logs Explorer. |
| Purpose | Apache SkyWalking is an observability platform for cloud-native systems and AI workloads. | Cloud Trace collects latency data to help troubleshoot performance bottlenecks across services and generative AI applications. |
Plans
In their own words
Apache SkyWalking
Apache SkyWalking is a free, self-hosted observability platform for cloud-native systems and AI workloads. It brings traces, metrics, logs, and profiling together to help users explore services, Kubernetes, and infrastructure through topology, telemetry, profiles, and alerts. For AI workloads, users can inspect model and MCP call latency and token rates, and review agent conversations, tool calls, and recorded file changes. The project lists agents for Java, Python, NodeJS, Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Nginx LUA, Kong, and client-side JavaScript. Its integrations and ecosystem include OpenTelemetry OTLP, Istio, Envoy, Kubernetes, Grafana, and MCP. BanyanDB is described as a database for ingesting, analyzing, and storing observability data. Docker installation instructions cover Linux, macOS, WSL, and Windows PowerShell. Horizon UI supports SkyWalking natively since v11 and partially for v10. Its security documentation covers Content-Security-Policy, strict session cookies, no-store API responses, and optional login auditing. Apache source releases are official artifacts, with PGP or SHA512 verification recommended; the GraalVM distribution is marked experimental.
Google Cloud Trace
Google Cloud Trace has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.