Honeycomb vs Uptrace
Honeycomb
honeycomb.io
Uptrace
uptrace.devSide by side
| Figure | Honeycomb | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $150/mo | $39/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 6 |
| Spec score · Distributed Tracing Tools | 8.6 (#3) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Spec score · Application Performance Monitoring | 8.5 (#6) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Spec score · Observability Platforms | 8.6 (#6) | 8.6 (#7) |
| Spec score · Application Performance & Observability - Midmarket Software | 8.5 (#6) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Spec score · Runtime Monitoring Software | 8.5 (#15) | 8.6 (#13) |
| Analysis | BubbleUp helps detect outliers and investigate them across traces, metrics, and logs. | It supports UQL for querying spans and logs and a PromQL-compatible engine for metrics. |
| Integrations | The integration directory lists technologies including AWS, OpenTelemetry, Slack, MySQL, Prometheus, ServiceNow, and GitHub Actions. | Telemetry can arrive through OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Vector, Fluent Bit and CloudWatch, and Grafana can use Uptrace as Prometheus or Tempo data sources. |
| Intended users | The pricing page describes Free as best for testing and individual projects, Pro for teams with a production application, and Enterprise for multi-team and large-scale applications. | 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. |
| Product | Honeycomb is an observability platform for debugging systems, application code, and databases using structured telemetry data. | Uptrace is an OpenTelemetry-native observability platform that unifies traces, metrics, and logs. |
| Security | Honeycomb's Trust Center lists SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA among its certifications and compliance frameworks. | Uptrace states that browser traffic uses SSL/TLS, database backups are encrypted, and most live database data is not encrypted at rest. |
| Support | Honeycomb Support handles generally available product features and can receive tickets through its support portal or by email. | 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
Honeycomb
Honeycomb is an observability platform for debugging systems, application code, and databases with structured telemetry. It supports distributed tracing, logs, metrics, and OpenTelemetry data sent over gRPC, HTTP/protobuf, or HTTP/JSON. Canvas combines AI-assisted investigations with natural-language queries, interactive exploration, and shared workspaces. Agent Timeline presents LLM calls, tool invocations, handoffs, and downstream system spans in event order. BubbleUp helps investigate outliers across traces, metrics, and logs. Listed integrations include AWS, OpenTelemetry, Slack, MySQL, Prometheus, ServiceNow, and GitHub Actions. The free plan allows up to 20M events and 100M metrics data points per month, with two triggers. Pro starts at $150/mo, with allowances of up to 750M events, 3.75B metrics data points, 100 triggers, and two SLOs. Enterprise has variable volumes and custom pricing. Honeycomb describes Free for individual projects, Pro for production teams, and Enterprise for multi-team or large-scale applications.
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.