AppSignal vs Uptrace
AppSignal
appsignal.com
Uptrace
uptrace.devSide by side
| Figure | AppSignal | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $23.25/mo | $39/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 6 |
| Spec score · Application Performance Monitoring | 8.6 (#4) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Spec score · Application Performance & Observability - Midmarket Software | 8.6 (#4) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Spec score · Runtime Monitoring Software | 8.6 (#10) | 8.6 (#13) |
| Spec score · Distributed Tracing Tools | 8.5 (#6) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Integrations | The site highlights Slack, GitHub, Jira, Linear, GitLab, and PagerDuty integrations. | Telemetry can arrive through OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Vector, Fluent Bit and CloudWatch, and Grafana can use Uptrace as Prometheus or Tempo data sources. |
| Intended users | The free plan is described as suitable for startups, hobby projects, and side projects. | The self-hosted editions page describes Community as for individuals, Starter as suitable for side projects, Team as a production default, and Business for reliability and compliance. |
| Product | AppSignal is an all-in-one application monitoring product for developers, with error tracking and performance monitoring. | Uptrace is an OpenTelemetry-native observability platform that unifies traces, metrics, and logs. |
| Security | AppSignal states that it is ISO 27001 certified and GDPR and HIPAA compliant. | Uptrace states that browser traffic uses SSL/TLS, database backups are encrypted, and most live database data is not encrypted at rest. |
| Support | AppSignal says customers can contact a real engineer through live chat or support email. | The project directs users to Telegram, Slack and GitHub Discussions for help; paid editions add email, priority, fast-SLA or dedicated support. |
Plans
Uptrace
- CommunityFree
- Uptrace CloudFree
- Starter$39 a month
- Team$199 a month
- Business$499 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
AppSignal
AppSignal is a cloud application-monitoring service for developers, with error tracking, performance monitoring, logs, and tracing. Error tracking groups exceptions with backtraces and the deployment linked to each issue. Performance monitoring covers response times, throughput, slow endpoints, and slow queries. Log management provides full-text search, attribute filters, saved queries, live tail, and pattern-based alerts. Distributed tracing, transaction tracing, and log correlation are available. AppSignal lists support for Ruby, Elixir, Node.js, JavaScript, Python, Go, Java, PHP, and Rust, with integrations including Slack, GitHub, Jira, Linear, GitLab, and PagerDuty. Its MCP server lets AI assistants such as Claude, Cursor, and Zed query production errors, traces, and deploys. The free plan costs nothing and includes 30K requests, 1GB logging, five-day retention, and unlimited users, teams, applications, and dashboards. Paid access is $279 a year, billed yearly at $23.25/month, with 250K requests per month. A 30-day full-featured trial requires no credit card. AppSignal says it does not charge overages or stop monitoring when limits are crossed.
Uptrace
Uptrace is an OpenTelemetry-native observability platform that unifies traces, metrics and logs. It provides UQL for querying spans and logs and a PromQL-compatible engine for metrics. Dashboards can combine spans, events, logs and metrics, configured in the UI or YAML. Metric and error monitors can send notifications through email, Slack, PagerDuty and other channels. Uptrace lists Grafana integration as a Prometheus and Tempo data source and includes a built-in MCP server for AI assistants. It offers cloud and self-hosted deployment, with Docker, Ansible and Kubernetes installation options; precompiled binaries are listed for Linux, macOS and Windows. Uptrace Cloud retains data for four weeks by default, with cold storage options for up to 100 weeks. The free Cloud plan includes 50 GB per month and 5,000 timeseries per month, while Community is free with unlimited usage and 14 days of retention. Paid plans start at $39 a month. The privacy policy says data in transit and database backups are encrypted, but most live database data is not encrypted at rest.