Google Cloud Trace vs Uptrace
Google Cloud Trace
cloud.google.com
Uptrace
uptrace.devSide by side
| Figure | Google Cloud Trace | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.20/mo | $39/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 6 |
| Spec score · Distributed Tracing Tools | 7.8 (#14) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Spec score · Runtime Monitoring Software | 7.6 (#30) | 8.6 (#13) |
| Spec score · Application Performance Monitoring | 7.7 (#25) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Integrations | Cloud Logging entries can be associated with traces and spans, and displayed alongside trace waterfall graphs or in Logs Explorer. | Telemetry can arrive through OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Vector, Fluent Bit and CloudWatch, and Grafana can use Uptrace as Prometheus or Tempo data sources. |
| Retention | Spans stored in the _Trace bucket are retained for 30 days. | Uptrace Cloud keeps data for 4 weeks by default, with cold storage options for up to 100 weeks. |
Plans
Uptrace
- CommunityFree
- Uptrace CloudFree
- Starter$39 a month
- Team$199 a month
- Business$499 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Google Cloud Trace
Google Cloud Trace has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
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.