# AWS X-Ray vs Honeycomb

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** AWS X-Ray

| Attribute | AWS X-Ray | Honeycomb |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 72.1 (63% (medium)) | 59.4 (72% (medium)) |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"Amazon CloudWatch Application Signals is an APM solution providing automatic instrumentation and observability for distributed applications across AWS services with prebuilt dashboards, service mapping, and AI-powered troubleshooting. It is indexed under Distributed Tracing Tools.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/xray/","question":"What is AWS X-Ray?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"AWS X-Ray offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/xray/","question":"Is AWS X-Ray free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed browser-based access to AWS X-Ray. 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://aws.amazon.com/xray/","question":"What platforms does AWS X-Ray support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for AWS X-Ray, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/xray/","question":"Can AWS X-Ray be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR for AWS X-Ray. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as AWS X-Ray not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/trust-center/?nc1=f_cc","question":"What security certifications does AWS X-Ray have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"AWS X-Ray is available worldwide. Its primary market is the United States. The vendor is headquartered in the United States.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/?nc2=h_pr_ec2","question":"Where is AWS X-Ray available?","confidence":0.75}]` | `[{"answer":"A unified observability platform that combines traces, logs, and metrics in one view for rapid production debugging. Built with OpenTelemetry support and high-cardinality telemetry analysis, it helps teams investigate issues across distributed systems and AI agents without paying extra costs as data volume grows. It is indexed under Distributed Tracing Tools.","source":"https://www.honeycomb.io","question":"What is Honeycomb?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Honeycomb offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Paid plans start at $0.10. Prices are published openly on the vendor's own pricing page. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://www.honeycomb.io/pricing","question":"Is Honeycomb free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Honeycomb supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://www.honeycomb.io/pricing","question":"What platforms does Honeycomb support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for Honeycomb, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.","source":"https://www.honeycomb.io","question":"Can Honeycomb be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 26 integrations for Honeycomb, including Anthropic Claude, OpenTelemetry, Google Analytics, Slack, Microsoft Teams, AWS PrivateLink, Jaeger and Zipkin, plus 18 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://www.honeycomb.io","question":"What does Honeycomb integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2 and GDPR for Honeycomb. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Honeycomb not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://www.honeycomb.io","question":"What security certifications does Honeycomb have?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Honeycomb is available worldwide. The vendor is headquartered in the United States.","source":"https://www.honeycomb.io/pricing","question":"Where is Honeycomb available?","confidence":0.75}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true}` | `{"cloud":true}` |
| description.long | A cloud-based monitoring and observability service that centralizes performance data from AWS services and on-premises applications, providing dashboards, automated insights, and distributed tracing capabilities through OpenTelemetry integration. | Centralized platform for storing and querying observability data from production systems and AI applications, designed to help teams rapidly troubleshoot issues through integrated logs, metrics, and traces. |
| features.capabilities | `{"hosting":"cloud","trace_role":"backend","service_map":true,"otel_support":"ingest","trace_search":true,"metrics_correlation":true,"auto_instrumentation":"agent"}` | `{"hosting":"both","trace_role":"backend","service_map":true,"otel_support":"native","trace_search":true,"tail_sampling":false,"multi_protocol":true,"storage_backend":"columnar data store","high_cardinality":true,"metrics_correlation":true}` |
| integrations.count | - | 19 |
| integrations.list | - | `[{"name":"Anthropic Claude"},{"name":"OpenTelemetry"},{"name":"Google Analytics"},{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Microsoft Teams"},{"name":"AWS PrivateLink"},{"name":"Jaeger"},{"name":"Zipkin"},{"name":"OTLP"},{"name":"Cursor"},{"name":"Claude Code"},{"name":"Amazon Bedrock AgentCore"},{"name":"MySQL"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"ServiceNow"},{"name":"GitHub Actions Honeymarker"},{"name":"AWS Secrets Manager"},{"name":"AWS CloudFront"},{"name":"AWS CloudWatch"},{"name":"Amazon Timestream"},{"name":"Tracetest"},{"name":"Amazon Kinesis"},{"name":"AWS CloudHSM"},{"name":"Fluentd"},{"name":"Terraform"},{"name":"Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service"}]` |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"web":true}` | `{"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"usage","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free tier","features":["3 Custom Dashboards","Automatic Dashboards","Free metrics from AWS services"],"contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"custom_dashboards":"3","automatic_dashboards":"unlimited","metrics_per_dashboard":"50"}},{"free":false,"name":"OpenTelemetry metrics ingestion","features":["15 months storage included","No API call charges","No per-metric-series charges"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.5,"currency":"USD"}]},{"free":false,"name":"PromQL query API","features":["Console/dashboard queries free"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1000000,"unit":"samples scanned"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.01,"currency":"USD"}]},{"free":false,"name":"Container Insights with OpenTelemetry","features":["EKS cluster metrics at 30-second granularity","Kubernetes pod/node labels","PromQL querying"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.08,"currency":"USD"}]}],"summary":"Free tier available. Usage-based pricing: $0.50/GB for OpenTelemetry metrics, $0.08/GB for Container Insights, $0.01 per million query samples.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/pricing/","retrievedAt":"2026-10-13T10:31:43.005Z","startingPrice":{"unit":"samples scanned","amount":0.01,"currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` | `{"type":"subscription","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free","summary":"Free forever, up to 20M events/month","features":["Distributed Tracing","2 Triggers","BubbleUp","OpenTelemetry Support","Team Query History","Query Result Permalinks","Honeycomb Metrics","Canvas AI Copilot","Honeycomb MCP","Agent Timeline"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Testing and individual projects","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"events":"20M/month","metrics_data_points":"100M/month"}},{"free":false,"name":"Pro","summary":"Starting at $150/month, flexible event volume","features":["All Free features","100 Triggers","2 Service Level Objectives (SLOs)","Single-Sign On (SSO)","Honeycomb Support"],"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":150,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"gb"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.1,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Teams with production applications","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"events":"750M/month","metrics_data_points":"3.75B/month"}},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","summary":"Custom volume discounts, enterprise support","features":["All Pro features","300+ Triggers","100+ Service Level Objectives (SLOs)","Service Map","Enterprise Support for Refinery","Enterprise-Grade Support + Onboarding","Query Data API","AWS PrivateLink","SLO Reporting API","Honeycomb Private Cloud support"],"commitment":"annual","description":"Multi-team and large-scale applications","contactSales":true,"includedLimits":{"events":"Variable","metrics_data_points":"Variable"}}],"addOns":[{"name":"Frontend performance analysis"},{"name":"Enterprise-grade alerting"},{"name":"Installation and enablement services"}],"summary":"From $150/month (Pro). Unlimited seats and queries. Free tier available.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.honeycomb.io/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T15:29:52.948Z","startingPrice":{"amount":0.1,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month","year"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | freemium | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | low | low |
| pricing.starting_price | `{"amount":0.01,"currency":"USD"}` | - |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.certifications | `[{"name":"PCI-DSS","status":"active"},{"name":"HIPAA/HITECH","status":"active"},{"name":"FedRAMP","status":"active"},{"name":"GDPR","status":"active"}]` | `[{"name":"SOC 2 Type II","status":"active"}]` |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.fedramp | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | yes |
| security.hipaa | yes | - |
| security.iso27001 | yes | - |
| security.pci | yes | - |
| security.soc2 | yes | yes |
| security.trust_center | https://aws.amazon.com/security/ https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/ | - |

## Capabilities (Distributed Tracing Tools)

| Capability | AWS X-Ray | Honeycomb |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Core** |  |  |
| Trace role | Trace backend / store | Trace backend / store |
| **Standards** |  |  |
| OpenTelemetry support | OTLP ingest | OTel-native |
| Multi-protocol (Jaeger + Zipkin + OTLP) | - | ✓ |
| **Query** |  |  |
| Trace search / filter by attributes | ✓ | ✓ |
| Service dependency graph | ✓ | ✓ |
| High-cardinality attribute exploration | - | ✓ |
| **Sampling** |  |  |
| Tail-based / dynamic sampling | - | ✗ |
| **Instrumentation** |  |  |
| Auto-instrumentation | Agent-based | - |
| **Correlation** |  |  |
| Correlate traces with metrics/logs | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud only | Cloud + self-hosted |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Storage backend | - | columnar data store |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T20:02:01.722Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*