AWS X-Ray vs Google Cloud Trace
AWS X-Ray
aws.amazon.com
Google Cloud Trace
cloud.google.comSide by side
| Figure | AWS X-Ray | 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 | 3 | 1 |
| Spec score · Distributed Tracing Tools | 9.0 (#2) | 7.8 (#14) |
| Instrumentation | Applications can send incoming, outgoing and in-application event data with metadata, often through configuration changes or SDKs. | Google recommends OpenTelemetry, with Go, Java, Node.js, and Python instrumentation samples. |
| Purpose | AWS X-Ray collects data about application requests and provides tools to view, filter, and analyze it to identify issues and optimization opportunities. | Cloud Trace collects latency data to help troubleshoot performance bottlenecks across services and generative AI applications. |
| Retention | X-Ray trace data is retained for 30 days. | Spans stored in the _Trace bucket are retained for 30 days. |
Plans
In their own words
AWS X-Ray
AWS X-Ray is a cloud service for collecting and examining application request traces. A trace can show request and response details alongside calls to downstream AWS resources, microservices, databases and web APIs. X-Ray also uses trace data to map clients, front-end services and backend services, helping identify bottlenecks and latency spikes.
Applications can send traces through X-Ray SDKs or APIs, AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry, or CloudWatch Application Signals. AWS integrations can add tracing headers, transmit data, run the daemon or instrument requests. For Lambda, the daemon can record invocation details, while the SDK can trace outgoing calls and add annotations and metadata. The SDK samples requests by default, with configurable sampling rules. Trace data is retained for 30 days and encrypted at rest; AWS Identity and Access Management controls access. X-Ray has a free allowance of 100,000 traces recorded and the first 1,000,000 traces retrieved or scanned per month; additional usage is billed by usage. Beginning February 25, 2026, AWS limits X-Ray SDK and daemon releases to security fixes and recommends migration to OpenTelemetry.
Google Cloud Trace
Google Cloud Trace has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.