vioscale
Comparison

Better Stack vs Thanos

No clear leader: Better Stack (60.3) and Thanos (57.3) are within the 5-point margin; treat as a tie. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.

Better Stack full profile →Thanos full profile →
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Better Stack60
Thanos57
Score
Vioscale score
Better Stack60 / 100medium · 73%updating
Thanos57 / 100medium · 54%updating
Pricing
Free tier
Better Stack✓
Thanos✓
Model
Better Stackfreemium
Thanosopen_source
Price level
Better Stackmid
Thanosfree
Transparent
Better Stack✓
Thanos–
Integrations
Count
Better Stack20
Thanos8
Security
Disclosure policy
Better Stack✓
Thanos–
Gdpr
Better Stack✓
Thanos–
Scorecard
Better Stack–
Thanos8
Soc2
Better Stack✓
Thanos–
Vulnerabilities
Reliability
Status page
Better Stack✓
Thanos–
Adoption
Dependent repos
Better Stack–
Thanos1,266
Github stars
Better Stack–
Thanos14,188
Activity
Commits last 30d
Better Stack–
Thanos51
Release
Cadence days
Better Stack–
Thanos6
History
Better Stack–
Thanos20 items
License
Spdx
Better Stack–
ThanosApache-2.0
Language
Primary
Better Stack–
ThanosGo
Market
Availability

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for observability tools. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Signals
Metrics
Better Stack✓
Thanos✓
Log management
Better Stack✓
Thanos-
Distributed tracing
Better Stack✓
Thanos-
Application performance monitoring
Better Stack✓
Thanos-
Real-user monitoring
Better Stack✓
Thanos-
Response
Alerting
Better Stack✓
Thanos-
On-call / incident management
Better Stack✓
Thanos-
Insight
Dashboards
Better Stack✓
Thanos✓
Standards
OpenTelemetry-native
Better Stack✓
Thanos-
Deployment
Hosting
Better StackCloud only
ThanosSelf-hosted only

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

Better Stack

Observability platform offering tracing, logging, infrastructure monitoring, error tracking, incident management, and real user monitoring. Positioned as significantly more cost-effective than competitors like Datadog.

Independently observed

Thanos

CNCF Incubating project extending Prometheus with global query view across multiple servers, unlimited retention via object storage, and downsampling capabilities.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

Better Stack

from $25/moSubscriptionFree tier60-day trial

From $25/month for telemetry or $29/month for on-call. Free tier included. Annual commitment provides ~22-25% savings.

  • FreeFree
    • 10 monitors & heartbeats
    • 1 status page
    • Slack & email alerts
    • 100,000 exceptions per month
    • 5,000 session replays
  • Responder$29/month billed annually or $34/month billed monthly
    • 1 responder license
    • Unlimited phone call alerts
    • Unlimited SMS alerts
    • On-call scheduling & iOS/Android apps
    • Incident management with AI SRE
    • +5 more
  • Telemetry - Nano$25/month annually or $30/month monthly
    • 40 GB traces
    • 40 GB logs
    • 40 GB metrics
    • 30 day retention
  • Telemetry - Micro$100/month annually or $120/month monthly
    • 160 GB traces
    • 160 GB logs
    • 160 GB metrics
    • 30 day retention
  • Telemetry - Mega$210/month annually or $250/month monthly
    • 340 GB traces
    • 340 GB logs
    • 340 GB metrics
    • 30 day retention
  • Telemetry - Tera$420/month annually or $500/month monthly
    • 700 GB traces
    • 700 GB logs
    • 700 GB metrics
    • 30 day retention
as of verify ↗

Thanos

Open source
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
Better Stack✓
Thanos✓
iOS
Better Stack✓
Thanos✗
Android
Better Stack✓
Thanos✗
CLI
Better Stack✗
Thanos✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Better Stack✓
Thanos✗
Self-hosted
Better Stack✗
Thanos✓

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

In common (3)
  • Grafana
  • Prometheus
  • Azure

Better Stack

20 total - 17 not shared
  • Slack
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Linear
  • GitHub
  • Datadog
  • Notion
  • Sentry
  • Zapier
  • Zabbix
  • AWS
  • Google Cloud
  • New Relic
  • Mixpanel
  • Intercom
  • Front
  • Drift
  • Terraform Provider
Independently observed

Thanos

8 total - 5 not shared
  • OpenTSDB
  • S3
  • GCP
  • Swift
  • Tencent COS
Independently observed

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.