tool vs tool
SigNoz vs Grafana Cloud / LGTM
The two leading open-source observability answers, built on opposite philosophies: SigNoz is one OpenTelemetry-native app you self-host; Grafana is best-of-breed components (Loki, Tempo, Mimir) you assemble — managed for you in Grafana Cloud. One app to run versus several systems to wire.
| SigNoz SigNoz, Inc. | Grafana Cloud / LGTM Grafana Labs | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Observability / APM | Observability / APM |
| License | Open core | Open core |
| Deployment | SaaS or self-hosted | SaaS or self-hosted |
| Monitors | ServersMetricsLogsTracesK8sCloud | ServersMetricsLogsTracesSyntheticsK8sCloudProfiling |
| Pricing | Free / OSSPer GB ingest Free tier ✓ | Free / OSSUsage creditsPer user Free tier ✓ |
| Cost | Low Self-host free; Cloud ~$0.30/GB logs/traces, from ~$49/mo. | Low Each backend (Loki/Tempo/Mimir/Pyroscope) bills on its own meter. |
| Self-host effort | Moderate | Heavy |
| Maturity | Rising | Incumbent |
| Protocols | OTLP | |
| The catch | Self-hosting at scale means you own ClickHouse ops, retention and upgrades; SSO/RBAC and some governance features are paywalled in Enterprise, so the community edition isn't enterprise-complete. | It's a stack of separate systems, not one product — metrics cardinality is the silent budget-killer (a misconfigured K8s label can be $1k+/mo), and self-hosting LGTM well needs real distributed-systems expertise. |
First-hand data
data as of Jun 24, 2026
- Significant incidents · 90d
- 434 critical · 21 major · 18 minor
- Incident-minutes logged
- 27.4 dayscumulative, not downtime
- Last incident
- Jun 22, 2026
Polled first-hand from each vendor's public status page & GitHub. "Significant" excludes informational notices & planned maintenance; incident-minutes sum per-incident durations (not platform downtime). Method & full data →
Which should you pick?
Pick SigNoz if…
You want a single, integrated logs-metrics-traces app that is OTel-native out of the box, and you are happy to run ClickHouse to own your data end to end.
Full SigNoz profile →Pick Grafana Cloud / LGTM if…
You want best-of-breed components, a managed option with a generous free tier, and the freedom to adopt one signal at a time — accepting that you are operating (or paying for) several systems, not one.
Full Grafana Cloud / LGTM profile →FAQ
Is SigNoz a good open-source alternative to Datadog?
Yes — SigNoz is the OTel-native, self-hosted project most often picked to escape Datadog’s bill. You get logs, metrics and traces in one app; the data-volume bill disappears and is replaced by the cost of running ClickHouse. It is the closest thing to a drop-in open-source Datadog if you can operate the storage.
SigNoz vs Grafana — which is easier to run?
SigNoz is one application (plus ClickHouse), so there is a single thing to operate. The Grafana/LGTM stack is several systems — Loki for logs, Tempo for traces, Mimir for metrics, Grafana for dashboards — which is more flexible but more to run. Grafana Cloud removes that operational burden for a price; self-hosting LGTM does not.
Built from the monitoring tool database — same facts, everywhere they appear. Last reviewed against vendor sources; pricing drifts, so verify before you sign anything.