Top 10 Honeycomb Alternatives 2024

Honeycomb is a great tool for distributed tracing, but like any other tool, it has strengths and weaknesses. It's probably the reason you're looking for another option right now. You might find that the pricing, user experience, or other aspects don't fit your needs. The good news is that different tools compete with Honeycomb.

This article will explore the top 10 Honeycomb alternatives.

Honeycomb key features

Honeycomb offers several great features, including:

• Distributed tracing to track request flow and identify bottlenecks;
• BubbleUp anomaly detection to highlight outliers and simplify root cause analysis;
• Service maps to visualize service interactions and dependencies;
• Service level objectives (SLOs), to define and monitor performance targets.

Honeycomb pricing

Honeycomb provides a free plan that offers up to 20 million monthly events. If you need more, a pro plan starts at $130 monthly for 100 million events, with scalability options for up to 1.5 billion events. Custom pricing options are also available if you have additional needs.

With that covered, let's look at the alternatives to Honeycomb.

The top 10 Honeycomb alternatives for 2024

Ready to find an alternative to Honeycomb? Let's start by comparing their features and pricing at a glance. Whether you're seeking enhanced distributed tracing, better observability tools, or more cost-effective solutions, this quick overview will set you on the right path before we explore each option in detail:

1. Better Stack

Kicking off our list is Better Stack, an all-in-one observability platform that's perfect if you're seeking a balance between simplicity and powerful functionality. Designed with user-friendliness at its core, Better Stack provides a seamless experience for managing your logs and metrics. While its distributed tracing feature is still under development, the platform already shines with its log and metrics management system.

Logs are automatically structured into formats like JSON, making them easy to query. If you're comfortable with SQL, Better Stack integrates ClickHouse SQL, allowing you to analyze telemetry data efficiently. And if SQL isn't your strong suit, an intuitive query builder handles the heavy lifting for you by writing the necessary queries automatically.

One notable feature is Better Stack’s real-time monitoring. The platform checks your servers, websites, or applications every 30 seconds from multiple locations around the globe, ensuring you receive timely and accurate updates on your infrastructure's status. In case of downtime or issues, Better Stack sends instant alerts via email, SMS, or phone—complete with valuable details like error logs and screenshots—to help you quickly diagnose and resolve problems.

Better Stack is also an excellent choice for incident management, enabling you to collaborate during outages or performance issues. With tools for organizing on-call schedules and escalation processes, resolving incidents becomes a smoother, more coordinated effort. Plus, customizable status pages allow you to keep your users informed without hassle.

🌟 Key features

• Infrastructure monitoring
• Observability dashboards
• Log management
• Incident management
• Customizable status pages

➕ Pros

• ClickHouse SQL and an intuitive query builder simplify data analysis.
• Generous free plan with core features to get you started.
• Pre-built dashboards make monitoring and analysis accessible to all users.
• Integrated monitoring, incident management, and status pages in one platform.
• Detailed alerts via phone, SMS, and email with helpful troubleshooting information.
• Supports integrations with major platforms like AWS, Slack, and Datadog.

➖ Cons

• Distributed tracing is in development but not yet available.

💲 Pricing

Better Stack’s pricing is flexible, starting with a free plan that covers 10 monitors, 3 GB of log retention, and a status page. The pay-as-you-go model, starting at $29/month, unlocks more advanced features such as unlimited alerts, 30 GB of log retention, and powerful incident management tools. Premium plans offer AI-powered insights, extended log retention, and personalized support for enterprises or growing teams.

Interested in the details? Visit the pricing page for more information.

2. Dynatrace

Dynatrace is another fantastic alternative to Honeycomb, offering an all-in-one platform that integrates monitoring, distributed tracing, security, and log management. One standout feature is PurePath, which captures complete end-to-end traces across your entire technology stack—legacy infrastructure, modern cloud-native environments, or serverless applications. With PurePath, there’s no need for manual configuration; it automatically gives you instant visibility into your systems.

Another unique feature is Dynatrace’s Smartscape, a real-time, auto-generated map of your entire application environment. It provides an interactive view of all your components—applications, services, processes, hosts, and data centers—while showing how they’re connected. This live map ensures an up-to-date view of your system as it scales and evolves, helping you spot issues and dependencies quickly.

In addition to tracing and visualization, Dynatrace’s Grail technology powers its unified log management and analytics. With Grail, you can easily extract meaningful insights from your logs and metrics, no matter the complexity or size of your data. This holistic approach ensures teams stay ahead of potential issues before they escalate.

🌟 Key features

• Distributed tracing
• Infrastructure and cloud monitoring
  
• Application security
• Log management
  
• Real user monitoring
  
• Synthetic monitoring
  
• Digital experience monitoring

➕ Pros

• Smartscape keeps your system’s topology up-to-date, simplifying dependency management in real-time
• With Dynatrace’s OneAgent, logs, metrics, and traces are collected automatically without manual setup
• Real-time vulnerability detection strengthens security across code and infrastructure
• Scales effortlessly to support microservices and serverless architectures
• Davis AI automates anomaly detection and root cause analysis, speeding up troubleshooting

➖ Cons

• Dynatrace’s extensive features can be expensive
• The platform’s complexity may be overwhelming if you need basic features

💲 Pricing

Dynatrace offers flexible pay-as-you-go pricing. Full-stack monitoring costs $0.08 per hour for an 8 GiB host, covering distributed tracing, applications, infrastructure, and microservices. Infrastructure monitoring is priced at $0.04 per hour for any host size. Additional services like Kubernetes monitoring, log management, and security features are priced separately, so you only pay for what you use—no hidden fees.

3. New Relic

New Relic is a good option for distributed tracing. Its features provide detailed insights into how requests move across your system, making it a breeze to identify performance bottlenecks and troubleshoot errors at the span level.

A significant advantage of New Relic is the availability of infinite tracing. It uses tail-based sampling to ensure only the most important traces are retained for analysis, so you won't overload your storage. This approach differs from head-based sampling; it captures and filters all trace data, offering deeper visibility into your systems.

The platform also has an intuitive trace explorer that helps you search, visualize, and analyze traces in real-time. Grouping similar spans simplifies error detection and makes troubleshooting more efficient. Plus, with seamless integration to OpenTelemetry, you can easily collect and unify data from various sources.

But that's not all! In addition to tracing, New Relic provides log management, security monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring, giving you a holistic view of your systems.

🌟 Key features

• Head-based sampling
• Infinite Tracing
• W3C Trace Context support
• Trace propagation
• Real user monitoring
• Application performance monitoring
• Synthetic monitoring
• Infrastructure monitoring
• Log management

➕ Pros

• Infinite tracing ensures only relevant traces are retained, helping you maintain deep analysis without overwhelming data volumes
• Integrates seamlessly with OpenTelemetry, providing flexibility in instrumentation
• Logs-in-context feature offers a faster way to troubleshoot by correlating logs with traces and metrics
• NRQL query language supports custom dashboards and alerts, giving you more control over monitoring
• Simple setup process, even if you're new to DevOps

➖ Cons

• Pricing can add up due to per-user fees and data ingestion charges
• Features can be overwhelming if all you need are traces.

💲 Pricing

New Relic offers a free tier with 100 GB of monthly data ingestion and full platform access for a single user. For more data or features, pricing starts at $0.30 per GB on a pay-as-you-go model. Pro and enterprise plans include additional benefits like advanced security features and priority support, tailored to teams with more complex needs.

4. Datadog

Datadog is a widely-used observability platform that brings all your monitoring needs—applications, infrastructure, logs, and security—into one easy-to-use interface. Designed to give you full visibility into your systems, it helps you monitor performance, quickly identify issues, and fine-tune your applications.

With Datadog’s distributed tracing, you get real-time, end-to-end insight into every request flowing through your system. Whether you're tracking frontend requests or backend processes, this feature helps you easily spot performance bottlenecks and troubleshoot issues. The trace explorer adds flexibility by letting you search and filter traces in real time, and when combined with metrics and logs, it paints a complete picture of any incident or slowdown.

Key features include Live Search, which allows you to search across all ingested traces in real time to troubleshoot incidents, and flexible ingestion controls, allowing you to adjust trace volume and sampling rates based on business-critical services. The request flow map visualizes service dependencies in real-time, while flame graph analysis provides an intuitive way to spot performance issues at the span level.

Datadog also offers tag-based retention filters for keeping critical traces long-term and tail-based sampling for infinite tracing, ensuring you retain only the most essential trace data. Additionally, with integration with logs and customizable filters, you can pinpoint the traces that matter most for effective, cost-efficient troubleshooting.

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🌟 Key features

• Distributed tracing
  
• Live search searches all ingested traces in real-time
• Flamegraph analysis to visualize and troubleshoot spans
• Tag-based retention filters
• Tail-based sampling
• Real user monitoring
  
• Application performance monitoring
  
• Synthetic monitoring
  
• Log management
  

➕ Pros

• Real-time trace analysis through the trace explorer makes it easy to pinpoint issues.
• Customizable trace sampling and retention help manage data and costs efficiently.
• A unified platform combines metrics, logs, traces, and security for full observability.
• User-friendly interface with excellent visualization tools simplifies complex monitoring tasks.
• 750+ integrations ensure compatibility with popular tools and services.
• Built-in security monitoring offers real-time threat detection alongside performance monitoring.

➖ Cons

• Pricing can be tricky, and costs may rise depending on your data usage.
• With so many features, it might feel overwhelming for smaller teams or users needing only basic monitoring.

💲 Pricing

Datadog’s pricing starts with a free tier that supports up to 5 hosts, offering core features with 1-day metric retention. The pro plan starts at $15 per host per month (billed annually), unlocking more integrations, 15-month metric retention, and container monitoring. The enterprise plan begins at $23 per monthly host, adding advanced features like AI-powered alerts and live process monitoring, giving you more profound control over performance and security.

5. Jaeger

Jaeger is another excellent option, especially if you're on a budget. it's an open-source platform specifically built for distributed tracing in microservices environments. Jaeger helps you monitor how requests move through multiple services, making it easier to detect and fix performance issues or system errors in complex architectures. It supports cloud-native environments and integrates well with modern observability tools.

It has features like adaptive sampling, which intelligently reduces the number of traces collected based on demand. This lowers storage overhead while still retaining crucial performance data. Another helpful feature is the system topology graphs, which visually represent service interactions. These graphs offer a clearer understanding of how different components within your system communicate, making troubleshooting much more manageable.

🌟 Key features

• Adaptive sampling
• System topology graphs
• Performance / latency optimization
  
• Service dependency analysis
  
• Distributed context propagation
  
• Root cause analysis
  
• Distributed transaction monitoring
  

➕ Pros

• Topology graphs make it easier to visualize system dependencies and quickly identify performance bottlenecks
• Completely open-source and backed by an active, supportive community
• Offers support for multiple storage backends, including Elasticsearch, Cassandra, and ClickHouse, to meet various storage needs
• Excellent for cloud-native and microservices environments, scaling to meet the demands of high-traffic systems
• Integrates smoothly with OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes, and Prometheus for greater flexibility in monitoring

➖ Cons

• The setup and configuration process can be challenging
• No dedicated customer support, which can make resolving issues more time-consuming compared to paid solutions

💲 Pricing

As an open-source platform, Jaeger is free to use. However, keep in mind the potential costs associated with hosting, especially if you require scalable storage backends like Elasticsearch or Cassandra. Large-scale cloud deployments may also incur hosting expenses.

6. Splunk

Splunk is another strong contender to consider, especially if you're looking for a comprehensive solution with distributed tracing.

With Splunk’s distributed tracing, you can visualize how requests flow through various microservices, allowing you to pinpoint performance bottlenecks and quickly resolve latency issues. The platform's service topology mapping automatically charts service dependencies, helping you understand service relationships and spot potential trouble spots in real-time. Additionally, the latency distribution analysis feature lets you identify and analyze slow traces, ensuring no performance issues are overlooked.

Splunk also provides deep customization options, such as waterfall visualization, to see exactly which spans contribute to delays and errors. You can drill down into individual spans, enriched with contextual metadata, to troubleshoot issues with precision.

Further enhancing Splunk’s flexibility, it supports OpenTracing and integrates seamlessly with other popular tracing tools like Zipkin and Jaeger. This allows you to collect, analyze, and visualize trace data across various platforms, making it easier to unify logs, metrics, and traces in one place for end-to-end observability.

🌟 Key features

• Service topology mapping
• Latency distribution analysis
• Waterfall visualization
• Service-level metrics
• Application performance monitoring
• Log management
• Infrastructure monitoring
• Real user monitoring
• Network Explorer
• Synthetic uptime monitoring

➕ Pros

• Dynamic service maps provide a real-time view of microservice dependencies, simplifying error detection and resolution
• Service topology mapping automatically maps services and discovers dependencies
• Its compatible with OpenTracing.

• Allows tagging and metadata in spans for a personalized visualization experience.

• Consolidates logs, metrics, and traces for complete observability in one platform

➖ Cons

• Learning Splunk’s proprietary query language (SPL) can be challenging for new users
• Splunk's props and transforms offer basic log processing but may lack the flexibility

💲 Pricing

Splunk offers various pricing plans to suit different needs. Infrastructure monitoring starts at $15 per host per month, while full end-to-end observability is available at $75 per host per month. Keep in mind that costs can add up depending on the features and level of support you require, so it's a good idea to assess your needs carefully.

7. Logz.io

If you're passionate about open-source technologies, Logz.io might be the perfect fit for you. It cleverly blends popular tools like Grafana, Prometheus, and Jaeger into a user-friendly interface, offering powerful observability features to monitor and troubleshoot your applications.

Logz.io’s distributed tracing gives you deep visibility into microservices architectures, allowing you to track requests as they move across multiple services. With its intuitive UI, you can easily visualize request flows, pinpoint bottlenecks, and identify the root cause of latency issues. Thanks to its integration with OpenTelemetry, auto-instrumentation is a cakewalk.

An interesting feature Logz offers is the service map, which automatically discovers and visualizes service dependencies. It also correlates logs and metrics with traces, offering a unified view that simplifies troubleshooting. The platform also includes real-time alerting to notify you of critical issues and deployment tracking to monitor how new changes impact system performance.

🌟 Key features

Trace visualization Trace Graph view Trace comparison - Distributed tracing - Observability IQ - Log management - AI-powered analytics - Infrastructure monitoring

➕ Pros

• Logz.io supports common tracing protocols like Jaeger, Zipkin, OpenTracing, OpenCensus, and OpenTelemetry. -Trace comparison lets you identify key differences between high-latency and better-performing traces to find performance bottlenecks- Supports over 300 integrations, offering a wide range of flexibility
• Allows you to use open-source tools like Prometheus, Jaeger, and Grafana without managing it yourself.
• Service map and dependency visualization make it easy to understand how services interact

➖ Cons

• Documentation can sometimes be lacking

💲 Pricing

Logz.io uses a pricing model based on the type of service and data volume. You can start with a 14-day free trial to test the waters. Managing logs costs around $0.90 per GB, while metrics and tracing come with custom plans starting at approximately $29 monthly. There are also enterprise plans with custom pricing, offering flexibility in areas like alerts, telemetry retention, and support.

8. Elastic Cloud

If you're searching for a managed solution with a strong open-source foundation, Elastic Cloud might be just what you need. It was created by the team behind the Elastic Stack—which includes Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash—it combines logs, metrics, traces, and profiling into a single platform, giving you a full view of your application's health and performance.

Elastic Cloud distributed tracing feature allows you to track requests across different services within microservices architectures. With end-to-end visibility, you can see how your system handles requests from start to finish, making it easier to identify performance bottlenecks, latency issues, or errors. Plus, with support for the W3C trace context standard, Elastic Cloud ensures seamless trace propagation, so you never lose sight of how requests move across services.

Elastic Cloud integrates smoothly with OpenTelemetry, simplifying instrumentation and ensuring detailed tracing without complex setup. The platform's intuitive APM UI offers deep insights into request journeys, helping your team pinpoint areas for improvement. Additionally, by pairing distributed tracing with real user monitoring, you can better understand how users interact with your system—enhancing reliability and user experience.

🌟 Key features

• Distributed tracing
• Synthetic monitoring
• Cross-cluster search
• Span compression
• Real user monitoring
• Infrastructure monitoring
• Data security
• Integration with Jaeger
• Transaction sampling

➕ Pros

• Built on open-source tools like Elasticsearch and Kibana
• Integration with OpenTelemetry and W3C Trace Context for smooth instrumentation
• Easy-to-use interface for visualizing application performance
• Strong community support
• Excellent search capabilities
• Built-in span compression to improve trace data efficiency
• Option to self-host Elastic tools

➖ Cons

• Requires significant configuration and setup, especially for complex use cases
• Can become expensive with more extensive data volumes and advanced features

💲 Pricing

Elastic Cloud offers flexible pricing plans to suit different needs:

• Standard plan: Starts at $95 per month, providing access to core Elastic Stack tools, basic security, and Kibana.
• Gold plan: Priced at $109 per month, includes reporting, alerting, and business-hours support.
• Platinum plan: Costs $125 per month, offering enhanced security, machine learning, and 24/7 support.
• Enterprise plan: Starts at $175 per month, providing advanced machine learning, extended data retention, and premium support options.

9. Coralogix

Coralogix might be just what you need as an alternative to the Honeycomb if you need full support for distributed tracing, logs, and metrics.

Coralogix shines when it comes to making trace data highly accessible. With advanced visualization options like Gantt charts and flame graphs, you can effortlessly follow how requests flow through your system and dive deep into spans for more insights. Plus, by integrating trace data with logs, troubleshooting becomes easier with a unified view to diagnose problems quickly.

Coralogix's integration with OpenTelemetry streamlines the process of instrumenting applications for tracing. Coralogix also offers powerful filtering and querying options, enabling fast searches through traces and spans so you can identify and address issues efficiently. And if you need to analyze historical data, Coralogix supports querying archived data from S3 without the hassle of rehydrating, reindexing, or loading snapshots—super convenient!

🌟 Key features

• Application performance monitoring
• Advanced filtering and querying for traces and spans
• Synthetic monitoring
• Log and metrics management
• Alerting
• Real user monitoring

➕ Pros

• Cost-effective processing through first-pass analysis in Kafka Streams helps you manage resources efficiently
• Efficient trace analysis with advanced filtering and query options saves time when pinpointing issues
• Direct querying of S3 archives without rehydration or reindexing allows quick access to historical data
• Integration with open-source tools like PromQL, Lucene, and Grafana offers flexibility and familiarity

➖ Cons

• Documentation can sometimes be incomplete or outdated, which might require a bit more effort to find answers

💲 Pricing

Coralogix uses a flexible, usage-based pricing model, giving you precise control over data management costs. Frequent searches are priced at $1.15 per GB, monitoring at $0.50 per GB, and compliance storage at $0.17 per GB. Metrics and tracing are priced according to data ingestion volume. They also offer a TCO Optimizer for cost estimation and optimization, a free trial if you want to explore the platform, and custom plans tailored for larger or specialized use cases—just reach out to their sales team.

10. Bugsnag

Bugsnag is a fantastic alternative to Honeycomb, especially if you need an all-in-one observability platform that covers web, mobile, and server platforms. Its distributed tracing functionality is especially effective for gaining insights into performance bottlenecks and troubleshooting errors in microservices environments. By providing end-to-end visibility, Bugsnag helps you trace the root cause of issues more efficiently.

Bugsnag gives you complete control over telemetry data while correlating logs and traces to simplify debugging. The side-by-side comparison of logs and traces reduces the need for context switching, essential for quickly identifying root causes and understanding system performance. Plus, the platform offers detailed visualizations of telemetry data, making it easy to shift between high-level overviews and in-depth traces with just a few clicks.

Bugsnag also focuses on cost efficiency with its remote sampling capabilities, allowing you to manage and scale telemetry without incurring excessive costs. Its flexible trace search and segmentation features empower you to quickly find and address the most critical issues.

🌟 Key features

• Distributed tracing
• Real user monitoring
• Error monitoring
• Advanced filtering and segmentation for traces
• Remote sampling
• Application stability management

➕ Pros

• Cost-efficient with built-in remote sampling to manage large data volumes
• Stability scores provide clear visibility into app health
• Side-by-side log and trace correlation for faster troubleshooting

➖ Cons

• Can be a bit difficult to use ### 💲 Pricing

Bugsnag offers a free plan with 7.5K events and 1 million spans monthly, perfect for smaller projects or initial trials. Paid plans start at $20 monthly, covering 50,000 events and 1 million spans. For advanced features like error prioritization and custom notifications, the preferred plan starts at $33 per month, ideal for larger teams. Custom enterprise options are also available for more complex and scalable needs.

Final thoughts

This article explored alternatives to Honeycomb; you should now know which tool best fits your needs. Each platform offers its unique strengths, so if you're still undecided, why not try them out using their free tiers or trial versions? Getting some hands-on experience will help you find the perfect match for your observability and monitoring requirements