Fluentd vs HyperDX

Fluentd is a free, open-source data collector for creating a unified logging layer. It uses JSON to handle log collection, filtering, buffering, and output across sources and destinations. More than 500 community plugins connect it to data sources and outputs, including Elasticsearch and Kibana, Splunk, AWS S3, Kafka, BigQuery, Datadog, and OpenTelemetry. It supports memory and file buffering, failover, and high availability to help prevent data loss between nodes. The project reports that a vanilla instance uses 30–40 MB of memory and can process 13,000 events per second per core. Fluentd v1 runs on Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows; community distributions also include Docker images, a Kubernetes DaemonSet, and Ruby gems. It is self-hosted, and its components are available under the Apache 2 License. The project lists community help and commercial support from companies offering enterprise services. The homepage notes vulnerabilities patched in Fluentd v1.19.3 and advises updating fluent-package to v6.0.4.

HyperDX is a cloud-based production monitoring and debugging tool that brings logs, metrics, traces, and user sessions together. It is an open-source observability platform powered by ClickHouse and OpenTelemetry, with cloud and self-hosted deployment options across web, Linux, API, and self-hosted environments. Full-text search works across events without complex query syntax. Users can create visualizations and alerts, while notifications can go to Slack, email, or PagerDuty. Session replays link automatically with backend logs and traces, and recurring log patterns are grouped into clusters. Documented SDKs cover Elixir, Go, Java, browser JavaScript, Nest.js, Next.js, Node.js, Python, React Native, and Ruby on Rails. The Free plan costs nothing and includes 3 GB monthly, 3-day retention, and one user. Starter costs $20 a month with 50 GB, 30-day retention, and unlimited users. Enterprise has custom pricing. Billing adds charges above 50 GB monthly and for metrics usage.