groundcover vs Uptrace
groundcover
groundcover.com
Uptrace
uptrace.devSide by side
| Figure | groundcover | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $30/mo | $39/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 6 |
| Spec score · Container Monitoring | 8.3 (#14) | 8.7 (#9) |
| Spec score · Application Performance Monitoring | 8.3 (#13) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Spec score · Runtime Monitoring Software | 8.3 (#20) | 8.6 (#13) |
| Spec score · Application Performance & Observability - Midmarket Software | 8.2 (#10) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Spec score · Observability Platforms | 8.3 (#12) | 8.6 (#7) |
| Deployment | Bring Your Own Cloud deploys the backend in the customer’s cloud while groundcover manages it, and the UI is hosted by groundcover. | Self-hosted installation options include Docker, Ansible, and Kubernetes, and Linux packages are available for amd64 and arm64. |
| Integrations | Listed integrations include Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, AWS CloudWatch, Google Cloud Monitoring, Azure, MongoDB Atlas, Redis Cloud, Datadog, and GitHub. | Telemetry can arrive through OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Vector, Fluent Bit and CloudWatch, and Grafana can use Uptrace as Prometheus or Tempo data sources. |
| On-premises | The Fully On-Prem deployment hosts both the backend and UI on customer premises, including cloud or physical servers. | The pricing FAQ says on-premises deployments keep telemetry within the customer's infrastructure and list SOC 2 certification on request. |
| Product | groundcover is a cloud-native observability platform powered by eBPF for monitoring production environments. | Uptrace is an OpenTelemetry-native observability platform that unifies traces, metrics, and logs. |
| 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 project directs users to Telegram, Slack and GitHub Discussions for help; paid editions add email, priority, fast-SLA or dedicated support. |
Plans
Uptrace
- CommunityFree
- Uptrace CloudFree
- Starter$39 a month
- Team$199 a month
- Business$499 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
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.
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.