Grafana Cloud Traces vs Uptrace
Grafana Cloud Traces
grafana.com
Uptrace
uptrace.devSide by side
| Figure | Grafana Cloud Traces | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $39/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 6 |
| Spec score · Distributed Tracing Tools | 7.8 (#15) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Intended users | Grafana describes Cloud Traces as helping teams understand request flows and troubleshoot performance issues at scale. | 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. |
| Support | The Free tier includes community support, Pro includes 8×5 email support, and Enterprise offers premium support. | The project directs users to Telegram, Slack and GitHub Discussions for help; paid editions add email, priority, fast-SLA or dedicated support. |
Plans
Grafana Cloud Traces
- FreeFree
- EnterprisePriced on request
- ProPrice not published
Uptrace
- CommunityFree
- Uptrace CloudFree
- Starter$39 a month
- Team$199 a month
- Business$499 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Grafana Cloud Traces
Grafana Cloud Traces 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.