Skylight vs Uptrace
Skylight
skylight.io
Uptrace
uptrace.devSide by side
| Figure | Skylight | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $20/mo | $39/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 6 |
| Spec score · Application Performance Monitoring | 7.8 (#23) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Privacy and security | The privacy statement says communications with Skylight are encrypted and access to customer information on secure servers is limited to selected personnel and contractors. | The privacy policy says data is encrypted in transit via SSL/TLS and database backups are encrypted, while most live database data is not encrypted at rest. |
| Product | Skylight is a smart profiler for Ruby and Rails applications that turns performance data into actionable insights. | Uptrace is an OpenTelemetry-native observability platform that unifies traces, metrics, and logs. |
| Support | Skylight provides documentation for setup, instrumentation, performance tips, background jobs, and troubleshooting, and directs users with further questions to contact support. | 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
Skylight
Skylight is a cloud profiler for Ruby and Rails applications, available through API, Linux, macOS, and web platforms. It ranks endpoints by “agony,” combining popularity with response time, and plots deployments against performance so teams can relate code changes to results. Supported Ruby frameworks include Rails, Sinatra, and Grape. Skylight analyzes Sidekiq, DelayedJob, and ActiveJob background queues, and can flag allocation-heavy code and repeated queries. Endpoint timelines present aggregated, sanitized SQL queries. GraphQL queries are grouped by name in the dashboard and endpoint event sequences. A weekly report identifies improved endpoints, slowdown warnings, and endpoints that declined over six weeks. Each account includes 100,000 free traces per month. Paid tiers start at $20 a month and adjust to monthly trace volume across apps. A 30-day trial is available without a credit card. Open-source apps may apply for free public reporting. Communications are encrypted, and access to customer information is limited to selected personnel and contractors.
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.