AWS X-Ray vs Grafana Cloud Traces
AWS X-Ray
aws.amazon.comGrafana Cloud Traces
grafana.comSide by side
| Figure | AWS X-Ray | Grafana Cloud Traces |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 3 | 3 |
| Spec score · Distributed Tracing Tools | 9.0 (#2) | 7.8 (#15) |
| Purpose | AWS X-Ray collects data about application requests and provides tools to view, filter, and analyze it to identify issues and optimization opportunities. | Grafana Cloud Traces is a fully managed distributed tracing backend for searching traces, generating metrics from spans, and linking tracing data with logs and metrics. |
Plans
Grafana Cloud Traces
- FreeFree
- EnterprisePriced on request
- ProPrice not published
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.
Grafana Cloud Traces
Grafana Cloud Traces has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.