Apache SkyWalking vs SolarWinds Observability
Apache SkyWalking
skywalking.apache.org
SolarWinds Observability
solarwinds.comSide by side
| Figure | Apache SkyWalking | SolarWinds Observability |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $5/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 9 |
| Spec score · Application Performance Monitoring | 8.4 (#7) | 7.8 (#24) |
| Spec score · Distributed Tracing Tools | 8.4 (#7) | 7.9 (#13) |
| Spec score · Runtime Monitoring Software | 8.3 (#19) | 7.8 (#27) |
| Purpose | Apache SkyWalking is an observability platform for cloud-native systems and AI workloads. | SolarWinds Observability SaaS combines application, digital experience, database, infrastructure, network, and log data to help teams detect issues, optimize performance, and troubleshoot. |
| Telemetry | The platform brings traces, metrics, logs, and profiling together to help users understand services. | The SaaS offering unifies logs, metrics, traces, database queries, and user experience data. |
Plans
SolarWinds Observability
- Log Observability$5 a month
- Essentials$8 a month
- Digital Experience Observability - Real User Monitoring$10 a month
- Digital Experience Observability - Synthetic$10 a month
- Advanced$14 a month
- Network and Infrastructure Observability$15.75 a month
- Premier$17.50 a month
- Application Observability$27.50 a month
- Database Observability$70 a month
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.
SolarWinds Observability
SolarWinds Observability has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.