Jaeger vs Uptrace
Jaeger
jaegertracing.io
Uptrace
uptrace.devSide by side
| Figure | Jaeger | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $39/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 6 |
| Spec score · Distributed Tracing Tools | 8.0 (#11) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Spec score · Runtime Monitoring Software | 8.1 (#24) | 8.6 (#13) |
| Spec score · Application Performance Monitoring | 8.1 (#16) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Deployment | Jaeger v2 is available as executable binaries and container images, and the all-in-one setup runs collector and query components in one process with transient in-memory storage. | Self-hosted installation options include Docker, Ansible, and Kubernetes, and Linux packages are available for amd64 and arm64. |
| Security | Jaeger documents TLS and mutual TLS support for several component connections, plus bearer-token authentication between browser and UI. | Uptrace states that browser traffic uses SSL/TLS, database backups are encrypted, and most live database data is not encrypted at rest. |
Plans
Uptrace
- CommunityFree
- Uptrace CloudFree
- Starter$39 a month
- Team$199 a month
- Business$499 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Jaeger
Jaeger is a free, open-source distributed tracing platform for monitoring complex systems and investigating performance problems. It helps teams locate bottlenecks, examine root causes, and map dependencies between services. Jaeger receives OpenTelemetry Protocol data and accepts Zipkin spans over HTTP in Thrift, JSON v1/v2, and Protobuf formats. Its UI includes System Architecture and Deep Dependency Graph views, while Service Performance Monitoring turns traces into aggregate metrics and time-series charts. Sampling supports head-based configurations, including centralized static or adaptive settings, and tail-based sampling. Cassandra, Elasticsearch, and OpenSearch are supported distributed storage backends; ClickHouse is experimental behind a feature gate. Jaeger v2 ships as binaries and container images, with an all-in-one mode using transient in-memory storage. It is self-hosted, so infrastructure determines capacity and scale. Jaeger v1 reached end of life on December 31, 2025.
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.