groundcover vs Kerno
groundcover
groundcover.comKerno
github.comSide by side
| Figure | groundcover | Kerno |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $30/mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 0 |
| Spec score · eBPF Observability Tools | 8.4 (#6) | 7.0 (#25) |
| Deployment | Bring Your Own Cloud deploys the backend in the customer’s cloud while groundcover manages it, and the UI is hosted by groundcover. | Kerno can run as a Kubernetes DaemonSet or as a binary on bare metal, VMs, EC2, and GCE; Docker images are published for Linux amd64 and arm64. |
| Integrations | Listed integrations include Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, AWS CloudWatch, Google Cloud Monitoring, Azure, MongoDB Atlas, Redis Cloud, Datadog, and GitHub. | The project lists Prometheus metrics and ServiceMonitor support, Kubernetes pod enrichment, optional Anthropic, OpenAI, and Ollama providers, and systemd enrichment. |
| Support | Standard support offers business-hours availability with stated response targets from under 8 hours for critical issues to under 72 hours for low-priority issues. | The security policy directs general questions to GitHub Discussions and vulnerability reports to [email protected], with acknowledgment targeted within 48 hours. |
Plans
In their own words
groundcover
groundcover is a cloud-native observability platform for monitoring production environments. Its eBPF sensor collects metrics, logs, and traces without code changes or manual instrumentation, processes data at the edge, and the product states that ingestion happens in real time without sampling. Bring Your Own Cloud deployment puts the backend in the customer’s cloud while groundcover manages it and hosts the UI. Fully On-Prem deployment places both backend and UI on customer premises, including cloud or physical servers. Integrations include Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, AWS CloudWatch, Google Cloud Monitoring, Azure, MongoDB Atlas, Redis Cloud, Datadog, and GitHub. Agent Mode can investigate telemetry and create dashboards, monitors, gcQL queries, and OTTL pipelines. The Free plan is free forever and includes 12-hour data retention and Slack Community support; paid plans start at $30 per host per month. Billing is based on average monthly monitored Kubernetes nodes or Linux hosts, not telemetry volume. The platform is available on Linux, self-hosted, and web.