vioscaleAI
Comparison

Grafana Tempo vs Honeycomb

No clear leader: Grafana Tempo (63.6) and Honeycomb (59.4) 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.

Grafana Tempo full profile →Honeycomb full profile →
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Grafana Tempo64
Honeycomb59
Score
vioscaleAI score
Grafana Tempo64 / 100medium · 58%
Honeycomb59 / 100medium · 72%
Pricing
Free tier
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
Model
Grafana Tempofreemium
Honeycombfreemium
Price level
Grafana Tempolow
Honeycomblow
Transparent
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
Integrations
Count
Grafana Tempo10
Honeycomb19
Security
Certifications
Grafana Tempo–
HoneycombSOC 2 Type II
Disclosure policy
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb–
Fedramp
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb–
Gdpr
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
Iso27001
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb–
Pci
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb–
Scorecard
Grafana Tempo7.4
Honeycomb–
Soc2
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
Trust center
Vulnerabilities
Reliability
Status page
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
Grafana Tempo73
Honeycomb–
Github stars
Grafana Tempo5,527
Honeycomb–
Activity
Commits last 30d
Grafana Tempo100
Honeycomb–
Release
Cadence days
Grafana Tempo11
Honeycomb–
History
Grafana Tempo20 items
Honeycomb–
License
Spdx
Grafana TempoAGPL-3.0
Honeycomb–
Language
Primary
Grafana TempoGo
Honeycomb–
Market
Availability
Grafana Tempo–
HoneycombAvailable worldwide · HQ US
Content
Faq
Grafana Tempo7 items
Honeycomb7 items

Capabilities

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

Core
Trace role
Grafana TempoTrace backend / store
HoneycombTrace backend / store
Standards
OpenTelemetry support
Grafana TempoOTLP ingest
HoneycombOTel-native
Multi-protocol (Jaeger + Zipkin + OTLP)
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
Query
Trace search / filter by attributes
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
Service dependency graph
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
High-cardinality attribute exploration
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
Sampling
Tail-based / dynamic sampling
Grafana Tempo-
Honeycomb✗
Instrumentation
Auto-instrumentation
Grafana Tempo-
Honeycomb-
Correlation
Correlate traces with metrics/logs
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
Deployment
Hosting
Grafana TempoCloud + self-hosted
HoneycombCloud + self-hosted
Architecture
Storage backend
Grafana Tempoobject storage
Honeycombcolumnar data store

What each one is

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

Grafana Tempo

An open-source distributed tracing platform that stores trace data using affordable object storage rather than specialized databases, making it simpler and cheaper to operate while integrating with Grafana and other observability tools.

Independently observed

Honeycomb

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.

Independently observed

Pricing

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

Grafana Tempo

from $19/moHybridFree tier

Open source (free). Grafana Cloud integration from $19/month or $25k/year enterprise.

  • Open SourceFree
  • Grafana Cloud Pro$19/mo
    • Platform fee includes limited trace retention and usage
    • 30 days retention for traces
    • 8x5 email support
  • Grafana Cloud EnterpriseContact sales
    • Custom retention
    • Premium support
    • Deployment flexibility (Public Cloud, Federal Cloud, Bring Your Own Cloud)
as of verify ↗

Honeycomb

from $0.10/moSubscriptionFree tier

From $150/month (Pro). Unlimited seats and queries. Free tier available.

  • FreeFree
    • Distributed Tracing
    • 2 Triggers
    • BubbleUp
    • OpenTelemetry Support
    • Team Query History
    • +5 more
  • ProStarting at $150/month, flexible event volume
    • All Free features
    • 100 Triggers
    • 2 Service Level Objectives (SLOs)
    • Single-Sign On (SSO)
    • Honeycomb Support
  • EnterpriseContact sales
    • All Pro features
    • 300+ Triggers
    • 100+ Service Level Objectives (SLOs)
    • Service Map
    • Enterprise Support for Refinery
    • +5 more
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

Platforms
Web
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
Linux
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✗
CLI
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✗
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✓
Self-hosted
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✗
On-premise
Grafana Tempo✓
Honeycomb✗

Integrations

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

In common (4)
  • Prometheus
  • Jaeger
  • Zipkin
  • OpenTelemetry

Grafana Tempo

11 total - 7 not shared
  • Grafana
  • Loki
  • OpenCensus
  • Kafka
  • Amazon S3
  • Google Cloud Storage
  • Microsoft Azure
Independently observed

Honeycomb

26 total - 22 not shared
  • Anthropic Claude
  • Google Analytics
  • Slack
  • Microsoft Teams
  • AWS PrivateLink
  • OTLP
  • Cursor
  • Claude Code
  • Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
  • MySQL
  • ServiceNow
  • GitHub Actions Honeymarker
  • AWS Secrets Manager
  • AWS CloudFront
  • AWS CloudWatch
  • Amazon Timestream
  • Tracetest
  • Amazon Kinesis
  • AWS CloudHSM
  • Fluentd
  • Terraform
  • Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
Independently observed
Still deciding?

Grafana Tempo or Honeycomb: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

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