SigNoz
UptraceSigNoz vs Uptrace: Which Open-Source Observability Tool Is Better? (2026)
Quick Verdict
Choose SigNoz if...
Best for teams of 5+ engineers wanting the most polished open-source Datadog alternative.
Choose Uptrace if...
Best for solo developers and small teams who want observability without operational overhead.
Datadog is amazing — until you see the bill. For engineering teams that want full-stack observability (traces, metrics, logs) without paying $50,000 a year for a Series A startup's worth of telemetry, the open-source OpenTelemetry-native space has matured into a genuinely viable alternative. Two projects in particular have emerged as the leading contenders: SigNoz and Uptrace. Both are open-source, both speak OpenTelemetry natively, both can be self-hosted, and both promise the Datadog experience for a fraction of the cost.
Choosing between them is harder than it looks. They take different architectural bets: SigNoz uses ClickHouse and prioritizes a polished UI with deep query capabilities, while Uptrace also uses ClickHouse but optimizes harder for ingestion cost and operational simplicity. Both have free self-hosted versions and managed cloud offerings, and both have small but active open-source communities. The right choice depends on your team's tolerance for self-hosting complexity, the volume of telemetry you generate, and how much you value UI polish versus raw query power.
After running both in production over the past few months, I'm sharing this head-to-head comparison so you can skip the trial-and-error. The criteria that matter most for teams building their first observability stack: how hard is it to deploy and operate, how clean is the OpenTelemetry integration, how usable is the dashboarding for non-experts, and how do the cloud pricing models compare for realistic data volumes? Browse all monitoring and observability tools for broader options. This guide is for engineering teams that have decided open-source observability is the path forward and need to pick a horse.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | SigNoz | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Distributed Tracing | ||
| Log Management | ||
| Metrics & Dashboards | ||
| Alerts | ||
| Exceptions Monitoring | ||
| OpenTelemetry Native | ||
| Service Maps | ||
| Metrics Monitoring | ||
| Rich Dashboards & Service Maps | ||
| Alerting & Notifications | ||
| Powerful Query Language | ||
| SSO & Enterprise Security | ||
| Self-Hosted Deployment | ||
| Data Compression | ||
| Continuous Profiling |
Pricing Comparison
| Pricing | SigNoz | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Free Plan | ||
| Starting Price | 49/month | Pay-per-use/month |
| Total Plans | 3 | 3 |
SigNoz- Logs, traces, metrics
- Dashboards and alerts
- OpenTelemetry native
- $0.30/GB logs and traces
- $0.10 per million metrics
- SSO & SAML
- 30-day trial
- Regional data control
- BYOC deployment
- Dedicated support
- Volume discounts
Uptrace- Self-hosted deployment
- All core features included
- Traces, metrics, and logs
- No feature limits
- Community support
- Docker & Kubernetes deployment
- Free tier: 1TB storage + 100K timeseries
- $0.05-$0.08 per GB ingested
- $0.0005-$0.0008 per active timeseries
- No per-seat fees
- Monthly budget cap guarantee
- Automatic volume discounts
- Fully managed infrastructure
- On-premises or private cloud deployment
- SSO with OIDC and SAML
- Data pre-aggregation for common queries
- PostgreSQL and ClickHouse sharding
- Cold storage support (S3)
- Custom data retention policies
- Dedicated email support
- Maintained by Uptrace engineers
Detailed Review
SigNoz is the more mature and feature-complete of the two projects, and it's the one most often described as 'the open-source Datadog.' It's built on ClickHouse for the data layer, ships with a polished React-based UI, and supports traces, metrics, logs, and exceptions in a single application. Its OpenTelemetry support is first-class — SigNoz contributors are active in the OTel community and the integration is well-documented with quickstarts for most major languages.
For open-source observability specifically, SigNoz's strength is the depth of its query and dashboarding experience. You can build custom dashboards with PromQL-style queries, set up complex alerts on traces or logs, and drill from a slow trace into the exact log lines from that request — all in one UI. The alerting engine is mature enough to be a real Datadog replacement, with multi-channel notifications (Slack, PagerDuty, email, webhooks) and configurable severity levels.
The tradeoff is operational weight. SigNoz's full deployment requires multiple components — ClickHouse, Zookeeper, an OTel collector, a query service, and the frontend — and on-call engineers need to understand the architecture. For teams of 5+ engineers running serious production systems, the investment pays off. For a solo dev or 2-person startup, it's overkill.
SigNoz is best for engineering teams of 5+ that want the closest open-source equivalent to Datadog and have the operational maturity to self-host it.
Pros
- Most polished UI in the open-source observability space — feels like a commercial product
- Deepest query and dashboarding capabilities of the two
- Mature alerting engine with multi-channel routing
- Active community and strong OpenTelemetry contribution
Cons
- Heavier deployment with multiple components — requires Kubernetes or Docker Compose competence
- Higher RAM/CPU footprint than Uptrace at the same data volume
Uptrace
OpenTelemetry-native observability platform for traces, metrics, and logs
Uptrace is the simpler, lighter-weight alternative that prioritizes easy deployment and low operational overhead. It also uses ClickHouse for storage and supports OpenTelemetry traces, metrics, and logs in a single application — but the entire stack is dramatically simpler to deploy. A single Docker command gets you a working installation, and the resource footprint is small enough to comfortably run on a $20/month VPS for small workloads.
For open-source observability specifically, Uptrace's strength is operational simplicity. The configuration is YAML-driven, the UI is functional and clean (if less polished than SigNoz), and the project is intentionally minimal — there's less to learn, less to break, and less to operate. Its managed cloud version is also one of the cheapest options in the space, often coming in 5-10x cheaper than equivalent Datadog usage for small-to-mid data volumes.
The tradeoff is feature depth. Uptrace's dashboarding is solid but less flexible than SigNoz, the alerting engine is simpler, and the community is smaller. For solo developers, small teams, or startups that don't need every observability bell and whistle, this is exactly the right tradeoff. For larger teams with sophisticated observability needs, the SigNoz feature gap starts to matter.
Uptrace is best for solo developers, small teams (1-5 engineers), and startups that want observability without operational complexity.
Pros
- Simplest deployment in the category — single Docker command for full installation
- Smallest resource footprint, comfortably runs on a small VPS
- Aggressively priced cloud version, often 5-10x cheaper than Datadog
- YAML-driven configuration with minimal moving parts
Cons
- Less polished UI and shallower dashboarding than SigNoz
- Smaller community means fewer integrations and slower release cadence
Our Conclusion
If you want the more polished product with deeper dashboarding, more mature alerting, and a stronger community — and you're willing to invest a bit more in self-hosting — choose SigNoz. It's the closest open-source experience to Datadog and is the right pick for teams of 5+ engineers running serious production systems.
If you want the simplest possible setup, lower operational overhead, and the most aggressive pricing on the managed cloud version, choose Uptrace. It's lighter weight, easier to spin up, and a great fit for solo developers, small teams, and startups that want observability without becoming observability experts.
A practical tip: if you're not sure, start with the cloud version of whichever you find more intuitive in a 30-minute test drive. The cost of a small cloud account is trivial compared to the engineering time you'd spend self-hosting either tool. You can always migrate to self-hosted later once you know your data volume and feature requirements.
Watch this space — both tools are evolving quickly, and the broader OpenTelemetry ecosystem is consolidating around standards that make migration between observability tools much easier than it used to be. For more options, see our category guide to monitoring and observability tools.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are SigNoz and Uptrace really free?
Yes, both are open-source and completely free to self-host with no feature gating. Both also offer paid managed cloud versions with usage-based pricing for teams who don't want to operate the infrastructure.
Do they replace Datadog completely?
For most use cases yes — both handle traces, metrics, and logs in one place with OpenTelemetry. They lack some of Datadog's enterprise features (advanced security monitoring, network performance monitoring, real user monitoring) but cover the core APM and observability needs.
Which is harder to self-host?
SigNoz has a slightly heavier footprint with more components (ClickHouse, Zookeeper, Query Service, Frontend). Uptrace is lighter and easier to deploy initially but both are manageable with Docker Compose or Kubernetes.
Can I migrate from Datadog to either?
Yes — if your application is already instrumented with OpenTelemetry, switching is just changing the exporter endpoint. If you're using Datadog's proprietary agents, you'll need to re-instrument with OpenTelemetry first, which is the harder lift.