Apache SkyWalking vs Kamon
No leader: the top candidate Kamon has only 0.21 confidence (low), below the 0.35 needed to declare a winner. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.
Capabilities
Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for apm tools. “-” means undocumented, not absent.
What each one is
The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.
Apache SkyWalking
An open-source system for monitoring and analyzing distributed applications with comprehensive tracing, service topology visualization, and multi-signal observability for microservices and AI workloads.
Kamon
Application performance monitoring platform providing metrics and distributed tracing for backend services. Supports open-source Kamon Telemetry instrumentation and integrates with Prometheus, Jaeger, and other observability tools.
Pricing
List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.
Kamon
From $89/mo. Free tier includes 5K metrics and 10M spans/month. Fixed subscription with transparent add-ons, no surprise overage charges.
- StarterFree
- High-fidelity metrics with up to 1% error margin
- End-to-end distributed tracing
- Service map with dependencies and realtime status
- Built-in integrations for HTTP, Database, and Akka services
- Track CPU, memory, and file system usage for unlimited hosts
- +4 more
- Teams$89/mo - 10K metrics, 100M spans/mo, 20 team members
- High-fidelity metrics with up to 1% error margin
- End-to-end distributed tracing
- Service map with dependencies and realtime status
- Built-in integrations for HTTP, Database, and Akka services
- Track CPU, memory, and file system usage for unlimited hosts
- +7 more
- Business$299/mo - 30K metrics, 500M spans/mo, 50 team members
- High-fidelity metrics with up to 1% error margin
- End-to-end distributed tracing
- Service map with dependencies and realtime status
- Built-in integrations for HTTP, Database, and Akka services
- Track CPU, memory, and file system usage for unlimited hosts
- +7 more
- EnterpriseContact sales
- Custom metrics capacity
- Custom span limits
- Custom data retention
- Dedicated support
- Volume discounts
- +1 more
Platform & deployment
Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.
Integrations
What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.
- Prometheus
Apache SkyWalking
- Apache APISIX
- Grafana
- OpenTelemetry Collector
- Amazon Bedrock
- OpenAI
- WeChat Mini Program
- Alipay Mini Program
- Kafka
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
- Envoy
- DeepSeek
- Claude Sonnet
- Zipkin
- OpenTelemetry
- Zabbix
- Fluentd
- Flink
- Kong
- Apache RocketMQ
- Apache ActiveMQ
- Pulsar
- ClickHouse
- +8 more
Kamon
- Jaeger
- Datadog
- Slack
- PagerDuty
- Akka
- Play Framework
- Cats Effect
- Lagom Framework
- Akka HTTP
Apache SkyWalking or Kamon: which one depends on you
A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.
Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works
Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.