# Apache SkyWalking vs Skylight

| Attribute | Apache SkyWalking | Skylight |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 52.9 (55% (medium)) | 53.9 (49% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 21 | - |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 106 | - |
| adoption.github_stars | 24,968 | - |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"An open-source observability platform combining distributed tracing, metrics, logs, and profiling in one interface. Provides automatic instrumentation across 10+ languages, interactive service topology visualization, database monitoring, and an AI assistant for answering observability questions in natural language. It is indexed under APM Tools.","source":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","question":"What is Apache SkyWalking?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Apache SkyWalking is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","question":"Is Apache SkyWalking free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Apache SkyWalking supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","question":"What platforms does Apache SkyWalking support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache SkyWalking can be deployed cloud / SaaS and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","question":"Can Apache SkyWalking be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 14 integrations for Apache SkyWalking, including Apache APISIX, Grafana, OpenTelemetry Collector, Amazon Bedrock, OpenAI, WeChat Mini Program, Alipay Mini Program and Kafka, plus 6 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","question":"What does Apache SkyWalking integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache SkyWalking is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking","question":"Is Apache SkyWalking open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"answer":"An application performance monitoring platform designed for Ruby apps that tracks performance metrics, identifies bottlenecks, profiles code execution, and analyzes database queries to help developers optimize application speed and reliability. It is indexed under APM Tools.","source":"https://www.skylight.io","question":"What is Skylight?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Skylight offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Paid plans start at $20 per month. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://www.skylight.io/pricing","question":"Is Skylight free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed browser-based access to Skylight. That is the extent of what we could verify from public sources, so it may well offer desktop or mobile clients we have not indexed.","source":"https://www.skylight.io","question":"What platforms does Skylight support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for Skylight, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.","source":"https://www.skylight.io","question":"Can Skylight be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 9 integrations for Skylight, including Sidekiq, DelayedJob, ActiveJob, Sinatra, Grape, GraphQL, MCP and GitHub, plus 1 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://www.skylight.io","question":"What does Skylight integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed GDPR for Skylight. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Skylight not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://www.skylight.io/privacy","question":"What security certifications does Skylight have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"Skylight is available worldwide. Its primary market is the United States.","source":"https://www.skylight.io/pricing","question":"Where is Skylight available?","confidence":0.5}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true}` |
| description.long | 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. | A service that tracks how Ruby applications perform in production, showing developers where their code spends time and what changes affect response speeds, with tools to spot slow endpoints and prevent performance regressions. |
| features.capabilities | `{"rum":true,"hosting":"both","languages":"10+ language agents supported","service_map":true,"otel_support":"ingest","db_monitoring":true,"code_profiling":true,"error_analytics":true,"anomaly_detection":true,"distributed_tracing":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` | `{"rum":false,"hosting":"cloud","languages":"Ruby, Rails, Sinatra, Grape","db_monitoring":true,"code_profiling":true,"error_analytics":true,"anomaly_detection":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` |
| integrations.count | 18 | 7 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Apache APISIX"},{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"OpenTelemetry Collector"},{"name":"Amazon Bedrock"},{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"WeChat Mini Program"},{"name":"Alipay Mini Program"},{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"MySQL"},{"name":"PostgreSQL"},{"name":"Redis"},{"name":"Envoy"},{"name":"DeepSeek"},{"name":"Claude Sonnet"},{"name":"Zipkin","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"OpenTelemetry","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Prometheus","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Zabbix","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Fluentd","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Flink","native":true},{"name":"Kong","native":true},{"name":"Apache RocketMQ","native":true},{"name":"Apache ActiveMQ","native":true},{"name":"Pulsar","native":true},{"name":"ClickHouse","native":true},{"name":"MongoDB","native":true},{"name":"Nginx","native":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","native":true},{"name":"Cilium","native":true},{"name":"BookKeeper","native":true},{"name":"ChatGPT","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Telegraf","native":true,"category":"metrics"},{"name":"Apache Pulsar","native":true,"category":"message_queue"}]` | `[{"name":"Sidekiq"},{"name":"DelayedJob"},{"name":"ActiveJob"},{"name":"Sinatra"},{"name":"Grape"},{"name":"GraphQL"},{"name":"MCP"},{"name":"GitHub","native":true},{"name":"Rails","native":true}]` |
| language.primary | Java | - |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | - |
| market.availability | - | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` | `{"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","retrievedAt":"2026-10-14T22:35:59.641Z"}` | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"100,000 traces per month","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"traces":"100k/month"}},{"free":false,"name":"Pay-as-you-go","summary":"Starting at $20/month","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":20,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Automatic tier adjustment based on monthly traces","contactSales":false}],"summary":"Free tier with 100,000 monthly traces; paid tiers starting at $20/month","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.skylight.io/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T20:48:14.422Z","freeTrialDays":30,"startingPrice":{"amount":20,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | free |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| release.cadence_days | 93 | - |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v11.0.0","date":"2026-08-28T02:40:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v11.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.4.0","date":"2026-04-01T12:51:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.3.0","date":"2025-11-10T11:40:02Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.2.0","date":"2025-03-24T11:52:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.1.0","date":"2024-09-29T13:30:12Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.0.1","date":"2024-05-30T03:42:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.0.0","date":"2024-05-13T01:02:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.7.0","date":"2023-12-01T18:19:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.6.0","date":"2023-09-03T14:33:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.6.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.5.0","date":"2023-06-18T16:20:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.4.0","date":"2023-03-09T04:01:37Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.3.0","date":"2022-12-04T03:44:41Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.2.0","date":"2022-09-01T12:54:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.1.0","date":"2022-06-10T03:01:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.0.0","date":"2022-04-09T12:13:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.9.1","date":"2021-12-11T13:57:42Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.9.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.9.0","date":"2021-12-05T07:33:26Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.8.1","date":"2021-10-02T16:39:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.8.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.8.0","date":"2021-09-27T09:58:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.7.0","date":"2021-08-02T12:25:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.7.0"}]` | - |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 7 | - |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.apache.skywalking%3Azipkin-receiver-plugin&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | - |

## Capabilities (APM Tools)

| Capability | Apache SkyWalking | Skylight |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Instrumentation** |  |  |
| Auto-instrumentation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Distributed tracing | ✓ | - |
| **Insight** |  |  |
| Service map | ✓ | - |
| Code / continuous profiling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Database monitoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| Error analytics | ✓ | ✓ |
| Real-user monitoring | ✓ | ✗ |
| SLO / error-budget tracking | - | - |
| **Intelligence** |  |  |
| Anomaly / root-cause AI | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Standards** |  |  |
| OpenTelemetry support | OTLP ingest | - |
| **Core** |  |  |
| Language agents | 10+ language agents supported | Ruby, Rails, Sinatra, Grape |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud + self-hosted | Cloud only |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T19:22:09.164Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*