Comparison

Elastic APM 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.

Machine formatsJSONMarkdownGraphQLor send Accept: application/json
Elastic APM50
Kamon60
Score
Vioscale score
Elastic APM50 / 100medium · 60%
Kamon60 / 100low · 21%
Pricing
Free tier
Elastic APM
Kamon
Model
Elastic APMcommercial
Price level
Elastic APMlow
Kamonhigh
Transparent
Elastic APM
Kamon
Integrations
Count
Elastic APM28
Kamon10
Reliability
Status page
Elastic APM
Kamon
Adoption
Dependent repos
Elastic APM6
Kamon
Github stars
Elastic APM1,272
Kamon
Activity
Commits last 30d
Elastic APM29
Kamon
Release
History
Elastic APM20 items
Kamon
Language
Primary
Elastic APMGo
Kamon

Capabilities

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

Instrumentation
Auto-instrumentation
Elastic APM
Kamon
Distributed tracing
Elastic APM
Kamon
Insight
Service map
Elastic APM
Kamon
Code / continuous profiling
Elastic APM
Kamon
Database monitoring
Elastic APM-
Kamon
Error analytics
Elastic APM
Kamon
Real-user monitoring
Elastic APM-
Kamon
SLO / error-budget tracking
Elastic APM
Kamon
Intelligence
Anomaly / root-cause AI
Elastic APM
Kamon
Standards
OpenTelemetry support
Elastic APMOTel-native
Kamon-
Core
Language agents
Elastic APMJava, .NET, Python, Node.js, PHP, iOS, Android
KamonScala, Akka, Play Framework, Cats Effect, Akka HTTP, Lagom
Deployment
Hosting
Elastic APMCloud + self-hosted
KamonCloud only

What each one is

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

Elastic APM

Application performance monitoring solution built on OpenTelemetry that automatically instruments applications, visualizes service dependencies, and identifies performance issues through distributed tracing and root cause analysis.

Independently observed

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.

Independently observed

Pricing

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

Elastic APM

HybridFree tier14-day trial

Free open source self-managed. Platinum and Enterprise tiers available via contact sales. 14-day free trial for Elastic Cloud.

  • Open SourceFree
    • Elasticsearch search engine and vector database
    • Kibana visualization and analytics interface
    • Data ingestion with OTel, Logstash, and Beats
    • Basic authentication and RBAC
    • TLS encryption
    • +2 more
  • PlatinumContact sales
    • SSO, LDAP/Active Directory, field/document-level security
    • Automated anomaly detection for logs and metrics
    • ELSER semantic search models
    • Cross-cluster replication for high availability
    • Service maps from APM data
    • +4 more
  • EnterpriseContact sales
    • Searchable snapshots for long-term low-cost storage
    • Attack Discovery automated alert triage
    • Universal Profiling for code-level performance data
    • Cross-cluster search with advanced security
    • Elastic Agent Builder for RAG and search development
    • +6 more
as of verify ↗

Kamon

from $89/moSubscriptionFree tier

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
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

Platforms
Web
Elastic APM
Kamon
CLI
Elastic APM
Kamon
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Elastic APM
Kamon
Self-hosted
Elastic APM
Kamon
On-premise
Elastic APM
Kamon
Air-gapped
Elastic APM
Kamon

Integrations

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

In common (2)
  • Slack
  • PagerDuty

Elastic APM

28 total - 26 not shared
  • OpenAI
  • Anthropic
  • Jina AI
  • Amazon Bedrock
  • Aryn
  • LlamaIndex
  • Red Hat
  • Microsoft Azure AI
  • Hugging Face
  • Mistral
  • Cohere
  • Google Vertex AI
  • NVIDIA
  • Alibaba Cloud
  • IBM watsonx
  • Unstructured.io
  • LangChain
  • Apache Spark
  • Apache Hive
  • Jira
  • ServiceNow
  • Microsoft Teams
  • IBM Resilient
  • xMatters
  • +2 more
Independently observed

Kamon

10 total - 8 not shared
  • Prometheus
  • Jaeger
  • Datadog
  • Akka
  • Play Framework
  • Cats Effect
  • Lagom Framework
  • Akka HTTP
Independently observed

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