Detailed comparison across 10 dimensions
Winner: Grafana Tempo
Grafana Tempo clearly comes out ahead of Honeycomb.io on Staquest's weighted six-dimension score. Both offer a free tier. Honeycomb.io's paid plans start at $130/mo.
| Overview | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type | hybrid | hybrid |
| Company | Honeycomb | Grafana Labs |
| Free Tier | ||
| Has API | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Learning Curve | - | - |
| Integration | - | - |
| Trending | Stable | Stable |
| GitHub Stars | - | - |
| Industries | - | Development |
| Categories | - | observability-apm |
| Website | Visit | Visit |
Grafana Tempo
freemium
usage based
custom
open source
freemium
usage based
custom
| Feature | honeycombio | grafana-tempo |
|---|---|---|
| 100 Slos | ||
| 10K Active Series Metrics | ||
| 100 Triggers | ||
| 14-Day Retention | ||
| 2 Service Level Objectives (Slos) | ||
| 3 Active Users | ||
| 2 Triggers | ||
| 50Gb Logs | ||
| 300 Triggers | ||
| 50Gb Traces | ||
| 60-Day Data Retention | ||
| 8X5 Email Support | ||
| Aws Privatelink | ||
| 99.5% Uptime Sla | ||
| Bubbleup | ||
| Advanced Security Features (Saml, Ldap) | ||
| Distributed Tracing | ||
| Compatible With Jaeger, Zipkin, And Opentelemetry | ||
| Enterprise Support For Refinery | ||
| Compliance Adherence (E.G., Federal Cloud) | ||
| Enterprise-Grade Support + Onboarding | ||
| Custom Retention | ||
| Everything In Free | ||
| Dedicated Support | ||
| Everything In Pro | ||
| Deep Integration With Grafana, Prometheus, And Loki | ||
| Honeycomb Support | ||
| High-Scale Distributed Tracing Backend | ||
| Monthly Or Annual Billing Options | ||
| Object Storage Dependency |
Showing 30 of 30 features
Dashes mean the feature isn't listed in our data. The tool may still support it.
On Staquest's weighted six-dimension scoring, Grafana Tempo comes out ahead overall, though Honeycomb.io can be the better fit depending on your priorities — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown above.
Both Honeycomb.io and Grafana Tempo offer a free tier.
Grafana Tempo scores higher on pricing value in Staquest's analysis. It is the highest-weighted dimension in this comparison.
Grafana Tempo is open source. The feature comparison and dimension scores above cover the full breakdown.
