Parca vs Polar Signals Cloud
Parca
parca.devPolar Signals Cloud
polarsignals.comSide by side
| Figure | Parca | Polar Signals Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $50/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Profiling Software | 8.2 (#6) | 7.9 (#10) |
| Spec score · Continuous Profiling Tools | 8.1 (#12) | 7.7 (#14) |
| Languages | The agent’s automatic profiling supports languages including C, C++, Rust, Go, Ruby, Node.js, Python, Java, .NET, Perl, and PHP. | The documentation lists support for C/C++, Rust, Go, Ruby, Python, PHP, Java/Clojure/Kotlin/JVM, Graal Native, Node.js, and .NET. |
| Product | Parca continuously collects, stores, and makes CPU, memory, I/O, and other profiles available for querying over time. | Polar Signals Cloud is a hosted service for storing and analyzing continuous profiling data. |
| Support | Polar Signals offers paid support for users of Parca’s open-source project. | The Pro tier includes Discord and Slack support, while Enterprise adds premium support, dedicated Slack Connect, and the ability to page on-call. |
Plans
Polar Signals Cloud
- Free trialFree
- Pro$50 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Parca
Parca is a self-hosted profiling system that collects and stores CPU, memory, I/O, and other profiles for queries over time. Its eBPF-based Parca Agent captures user-space and kernel-space stack traces, while the system also accepts valid pprof-formatted profiles pushed through gRPC or pulled from targets over HTTP. Users can query by labels, compare dimensions such as processes or code versions, and view profiles in the web interface with Icicle Graphs. A Grafana plugin can display profiles stored in Parca. The agent supports automatic profiling for languages including C, C++, Go, Rust, .NET, Deno, Erlang, Java, Julia, Node.js, Wasmtime, PHP, Ruby, and Python. Installation options include binaries, containers, Kubernetes, and Snaps. Parca is open source under the Apache 2 License and is free. The agent requires Linux kernel 4.18 or newer and privileged access to load eBPF programs. Parca says it receives profiling statistics and function-name metadata, not binaries or source code.
Polar Signals Cloud
Polar Signals Cloud has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.