Observability tools comparison — 2025
How do you choose a stack for metrics, logs and traces? Below we compare 9 popular platforms — from open-source to SaaS — against 7 criteria: signal coverage, alerting, SLOs, hosting, licensing, costs and integration maturity.
What we compare
Coverage of metrics, logs and traces; alerting and SLOs; deployment model (self-hosted/SaaS); license type; estimated operational effort; and OpenTelemetry integration.
Who it’s for
SRE/DevOps/Platform teams that want unified signals, less alert noise and lower MTTR — without runaway costs.
How to read it
There’s no single “best” choice. Focus on trade-offs between cost control, time-to-value and scale flexibility.
9 platforms — side-by-side comparison
A condensed summary of key traits. In practice, teams often combine components (e.g., Prometheus + Grafana + Loki/Tempo) or pick a SaaS for a quick start.
| Platform | Signals | Alerting & SLOs | Hosting | License | Strengths | Challenges |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prometheus + Grafana | Metrics; dashboards; OTel integrations | Alertmanager rules; SLOs in Grafana | Self-host or Grafana Cloud | OSS | Reliable and cost-efficient for metrics at scale | Cardinality/retention need discipline |
| Loki | Logs (label index), OTel | Alerting via Grafana/rules | Self-host / Grafana Cloud | OSS | Economical logging, strong compression | Requires thoughtful labelling |
| Tempo | Traces (OTLP/Jaeger), exemplars | Alerts via metrics/trace rate | Self-host / Grafana Cloud | OSS | Scales well, low storage cost | Advanced RCA usually needs other modules |
| Jaeger | Traces (OTel/Jaeger) | Integrates with alerting | Self-host | OSS | Simple, stable tracing | No built-in metrics/logs |
| Elastic Stack | Logs, metrics, APM/traces | Alerting & SLOs (X-Pack) | Self-host / Elastic Cloud | OSS + commercial | Powerful search, large ecosystem | Index costs and tuning |
| OpenSearch | Logs, metrics, traces (plugins) | Alerting, dashboards | Self-host / managed | OSS | Open and flexible | Needs tight cost & retention controls |
| Grafana Cloud | Metrics, logs, traces (SaaS) | Alerting, SLOs, on-call | SaaS | Commercial | Fast start, ready integrations | Volume-based pricing |
| Datadog | Full stack: M/L/T + APM/RUM | Advanced alerting, SLOs, AI | SaaS | Commercial | Feature-rich with deep integrations | Costs with high data volume |
| New Relic | Full stack + Telemetry Data Platform | SLOs, alerting, APM | SaaS | Commercial | One platform for all signals | Budget impact at long retention |
Documentation & standards: OpenTelemetry · Prometheus · Grafana · Jaeger · Elastic · OpenSearch · Datadog · New Relic
3 selection scenarios — which path when
“Open-source & cost control”
Prometheus + Grafana + Loki/Tempo. Full control of retention and cardinality. Requires ops skills and strong labelling practices; use OTel Collector for routing.
“Fast start & fewer ops”
Grafana Cloud or a SaaS platform. Ready integrations, SLOs and on-call included. You pay per data volume — sampling and retention policies are crucial.
“Strong logging + search”
Elastic or OpenSearch with OTel. Flexible indexing and queries. Needs careful index-cost governance and ILM strategy.
Implementation plan (7–14 day pilot)
Unified signal standards + cost control + quick SLO dashboards. Iterative delivery with measurable outcomes.
Discovery
Service & signal map, SLI/SLO priorities, audit and retention requirements.
Instrumentation
OpenTelemetry SDK/auto-instr., Collector, semantic conventions and sampling.
Dashboards & alerts
SLO funnels, burn rate, thresholds with seasonality, on-call queues.
Report & roadmap
Impact, costs, retention/cardinality recommendations, scaling plan.
FAQ — quick answers
Do we need to standardize everything in OTel from day one?
How do we keep SaaS costs under control?
Self-hosted or cloud?
What do we get after the pilot?
Want the right observability stack for your goals and budget?
Free 20-minute consultation — we’ll assess your needs and propose a pilot plan.