# AWS X-Ray vs OpenTelemetry

| Attribute | AWS X-Ray | OpenTelemetry |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 72.1 (63% (medium)) | 68.6 (46% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | - | 100 |
| adoption.github_stars | - | 7,657 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | - | 136,546,252 |
| 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 standardized platform for instrumenting applications to collect traces, metrics, and logs. Data is collected through language-specific SDKs and services, then exported to any observability backend without requiring application code changes. It is indexed under Distributed Tracing Tools.","source":"https://opentelemetry.io","question":"What is OpenTelemetry?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"OpenTelemetry 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://opentelemetry.io","question":"Is OpenTelemetry free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"OpenTelemetry supports a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://opentelemetry.io","question":"What platforms does OpenTelemetry support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. OpenTelemetry can be deployed cloud / SaaS, hybrid, on-premise and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://opentelemetry.io","question":"Can OpenTelemetry be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 3 integrations for OpenTelemetry, including Jaeger, Prometheus and Zipkin. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://opentelemetry.io","question":"What does OpenTelemetry integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed GDPR for OpenTelemetry. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as OpenTelemetry not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://opentelemetry.io/bn/docs/security/handling-sensitive-data/","question":"What security certifications does OpenTelemetry have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"Yes. OpenTelemetry 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/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector","question":"Is OpenTelemetry open source?","confidence":0.95}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":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. | OpenTelemetry is an open-source framework that equips developers with SDKs, libraries, agents, and collector services to capture distributed traces, metrics, and logs from applications. It enables vendor-neutral observability by allowing teams to instrument code once and export telemetry data to any backend system without vendor lock-in. |
| features.capabilities | `{"hosting":"cloud","trace_role":"backend","service_map":true,"otel_support":"ingest","trace_search":true,"metrics_correlation":true,"auto_instrumentation":"agent"}` | `{"apm":true,"logs":true,"hosting":"both","metrics":true,"tracing":true,"trace_role":"platform","otel_native":true,"service_map":true,"otel_support":"native","trace_search":true,"multi_protocol":true,"metrics_correlation":true,"auto_instrumentation":"agent"}` |
| integrations.count | - | 2 |
| integrations.list | - | `[{"name":"Jaeger"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Zipkin"}]` |
| language.primary | - | Go |
| license.spdx | - | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"web":true}` | `{"windows":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":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://opentelemetry.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-24T22:37:05.387Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | freemium | commercial |
| pricing.price_level | low | free |
| pricing.starting_price | `{"amount":0.01,"currency":"USD"}` | - |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | - | 13 |
| release.history | - | `[{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.163.0","date":"2026-10-14T02:03:50Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.163.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.162.0","date":"2026-09-28T14:09:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.162.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.161.0","date":"2026-09-14T22:49:14Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.161.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.160.0","date":"2026-09-02T14:38:58Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.160.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.159.0","date":"2026-08-17T17:37:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.159.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.158.0","date":"2026-08-04T13:44:21Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.158.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.157.0","date":"2026-07-21T12:38:34Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.157.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.156.0","date":"2026-07-07T07:29:34Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.156.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.155.0","date":"2026-06-23T16:56:18Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.155.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.154.0","date":"2026-06-08T23:51:21Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.154.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.153.0","date":"2026-05-25T08:09:17Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.153.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.152.1","date":"2026-05-19T19:53:43Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.152.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.152.0","date":"2026-05-11T11:48:19Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.152.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.151.0","date":"2026-04-28T18:57:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.151.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.150.0","date":"2026-04-13T11:06:56Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.150.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.149.0","date":"2026-03-31T13:43:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.149.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.148.0","date":"2026-03-17T13:42:51Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.148.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.147.0","date":"2026-03-02T15:09:00Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.147.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.146.1","date":"2026-02-18T13:48:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.146.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.146.0","date":"2026-02-17T21:22:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.146.0"}]` |
| 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"}]` | - |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | yes |
| security.fedramp | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | yes |
| security.hipaa | yes | - |
| security.iso27001 | yes | - |
| security.pci | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | - | 7.9 |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |
| security.trust_center | https://aws.amazon.com/security/ https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/ | https://opentelemetry.io/bn/docs/zero-code/obi/security/ |

## Capabilities (Distributed Tracing Tools)

| Capability | AWS X-Ray | OpenTelemetry |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Core** |  |  |
| Trace role | Trace backend / store | SaaS platform |
| **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 | Agent-based |
| **Correlation** |  |  |
| Correlate traces with metrics/logs | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud only | Cloud + self-hosted |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Storage backend | - | - |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T17:47:44.012Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*