Apache SkyWalking

Name: Apache SkyWalking
Author: Apache Software Foundation

Open SourceFree Tier

Open-source APM and service mesh observability.

Apache Software Foundation15 views0 comparisons

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About Apache SkyWalking

Apache SkyWalking is a comprehensive observability platform engineered for distributed systems, microservices, and cloud-native environments. It provides deep insights through distributed tracing, performance metrics, and service mesh analysis, enabling teams to monitor complex application topologies effectively. Designed for developers and SREs, it excels at identifying bottlenecks and latency issues across polyglot architectures. Its primary differentiator is the native support for service mesh and cross-language tracing, which allows for seamless visibility into highly dynamic, containerized infrastructures without requiring extensive manual instrumentation or complex configuration changes.

Type:Hybrid

API:Available

Free Tier:Available

Source:Open Source

Pros & Cons

Pros

Provides native support for service mesh observability.
Offers low-overhead distributed tracing for polyglot microservices.
Features a highly scalable architecture for large-scale data ingestion.
Includes robust visualization for complex service topology maps.
Supports multiple storage backends like Elasticsearch and TiDB.

Cons

Configuration can be complex for beginners unfamiliar with observability stacks.
Documentation can be inconsistent or difficult to navigate for specific edge cases.
Requires significant infrastructure resources to manage high-volume trace data.

Who Is This For?

Best For

Site Reliability Engineers

Requires deep visibility into distributed system latency and service dependencies.

DevOps Engineers

Needs a scalable, open-source solution for monitoring containerized cloud-native deployments.

Backend Developers

Benefits from cross-language tracing to debug performance issues in microservice architectures.

Not Ideal For

Small Startup Teams

The operational overhead of maintaining the observability cluster may outweigh the benefits.

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IndustriesSoftware Development saas-cloud

Categoriesobservability apm

Pricing

As a fully open-source project under the Apache Software Foundation, SkyWalking is free to use, offering significant value for organizations that prefer self-hosting over expensive proprietary APM alternatives.