Apache SkyWalking vs Splunk APM

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.

Splunk APM has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.