# Grafana Tempo vs Honeycomb

| Attribute | Grafana Tempo | Honeycomb |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 63.6 (58% (medium)) | 59.4 (72% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | - |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 73 | - |
| adoption.github_stars | 5,527 | - |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"Grafana Tempo is an open-source distributed tracing backend designed for high-scale trace collection using only object storage, integrating with Grafana, Prometheus, and Loki. It supports industry-standard tracing protocols and eliminates the need for expensive database infrastructure. It is indexed under Distributed Tracing Tools.","source":"https://grafana.com/oss/tempo/","question":"What is Grafana Tempo?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Grafana Tempo is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the AGPL-3.0 licence. A commercial or hosted edition starts at $19 per month. Prices are published openly on the vendor's own pricing page. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://grafana.com/oss/tempo/","question":"Is Grafana Tempo free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Grafana Tempo supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://grafana.com/oss/tempo/","question":"What platforms does Grafana Tempo support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Grafana Tempo can be deployed cloud / SaaS and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://grafana.com/oss/tempo/","question":"Can Grafana Tempo be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 7 integrations for Grafana Tempo, including Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Jaeger, Zipkin, OpenTelemetry and OpenCensus. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://grafana.com/oss/tempo/","question":"What does Grafana Tempo integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2, ISO 27001 and GDPR for Grafana Tempo. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Grafana Tempo not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://trust.grafana.com","question":"What security certifications does Grafana Tempo have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"Yes. Grafana Tempo is published under the AGPL-3.0 licence, a copyleft licence, so check its terms before embedding it in a closed-source product. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo","question":"Is Grafana Tempo open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"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,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true}` |
| description.long | 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. | 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":"both","trace_role":"backend","service_map":true,"otel_support":"ingest","trace_search":true,"multi_protocol":true,"storage_backend":"object storage","high_cardinality":true,"metrics_correlation":true}` | `{"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 | 10 | 19 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Loki"},{"name":"Jaeger"},{"name":"Zipkin"},{"name":"OpenTelemetry"},{"name":"OpenCensus"},{"name":"Kafka","native":true,"direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Amazon S3","category":"storage"},{"name":"Google Cloud Storage","category":"storage"},{"name":"Microsoft Azure","category":"storage"}]` | `[{"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"}]` |
| language.primary | Go | - |
| license.spdx | AGPL-3.0 | - |
| market.availability | - | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` | `{"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Open Source","description":"Grafana Tempo open source (AGPLv3)","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Grafana Cloud Pro","features":["Platform fee includes limited trace retention and usage","30 days retention for traces","8x5 email support"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":19,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Grafana Cloud Enterprise","features":["Custom retention","Premium support","Deployment flexibility (Public Cloud, Federal Cloud, Bring Your Own Cloud)"],"commitment":"annual","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":25000,"period":"year","currency":"USD"}],"contactSales":true}],"summary":"Open source (free). Grafana Cloud integration from $19/month or $25k/year enterprise.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://grafana.com/oss/tempo/","retrievedAt":"2026-08-01T14:57:40.524Z","startingPrice":{"amount":19,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month","year"]}` | `{"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.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 11 | - |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v3.1.0","date":"2026-09-29T17:06:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v3.1.0-rc.1","date":"2026-09-17T17:22:52Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v3.1.0-rc.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v3.0.3","date":"2026-08-13T20:37:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.0.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.10.8","date":"2026-08-13T20:37:12Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.10.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.9.5","date":"2026-08-13T20:37:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.9.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.9.4","date":"2026-07-24T12:29:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.9.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.10.7","date":"2026-06-12T16:28:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.10.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v3.0.2","date":"2026-06-09T16:30:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.0.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.10.6","date":"2026-06-08T21:43:32Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.10.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v3.0.0","date":"2026-05-28T15:09:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v3.0.0-rc.1","date":"2026-05-06T15:23:02Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v3.0.0-rc.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.10.5","date":"2026-04-23T18:14:34Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.10.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.9.2","date":"2026-04-23T22:24:52Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.9.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.8.4","date":"2026-04-23T22:25:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.8.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.10.4","date":"2026-04-13T11:20:01Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.10.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.10.3","date":"2026-03-17T17:52:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.10.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.10.2","date":"2026-03-12T15:04:28Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.10.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.10.1","date":"2026-02-17T11:49:56Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.10.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.10.0","date":"2026-01-26T17:59:35Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.10.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases/tag/v2.8.3","date":"2026-01-20T19:47:32Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.8.3"}]` | - |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.certifications | - | `[{"name":"SOC 2 Type II","status":"active"}]` |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.fedramp | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | yes |
| security.iso27001 | yes | - |
| security.pci | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | 7.4 | - |
| security.soc2 | yes | yes |
| security.trust_center | https://grafana.com/security/hall-of-fame/issue_35/ | - |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":3,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2Fgrafana%2Ftempo&per_page=100","last_12m":3,"max_severity":"HIGH"}` | - |

## Capabilities (Distributed Tracing Tools)

| Capability | Grafana Tempo | 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 | - | - |
| **Correlation** |  |  |
| Correlate traces with metrics/logs | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud + self-hosted | Cloud + self-hosted |
| **Architecture** |  |  |
| Storage backend | object storage | columnar data store |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T19:30:22.845Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*