# Apache SkyWalking vs Tideways

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Apache SkyWalking

| Attribute | Apache SkyWalking | Tideways |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 53.3 (54% (medium)) | 47 (72% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 20 | - |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 106 | - |
| adoption.github_stars | 24,930 | - |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true}` |
| description.long | An open-source observability platform combining distributed tracing, metrics, logs, and profiling in one interface. Provides automatic instrumentation across 10+ languages, interactive service topology visualization, database monitoring, and an AI assistant for answering observability questions in natural language. | PHP application performance monitoring, profiling, and error tracking. Tideways shows where performance breaks down in production in real time. |
| features.capabilities | `{"rum":true,"hosting":"both","languages":"10+ language agents supported","service_map":true,"otel_support":"ingest","db_monitoring":true,"code_profiling":true,"error_analytics":true,"anomaly_detection":true,"distributed_tracing":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` | `{"rum":true,"hosting":"cloud","languages":"PHP","db_monitoring":true,"code_profiling":true,"error_analytics":true,"distributed_tracing":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` |
| integrations.count | 14 | 7 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Apache APISIX"},{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"OpenTelemetry Collector"},{"name":"Amazon Bedrock"},{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"WeChat Mini Program"},{"name":"Alipay Mini Program"},{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"MySQL"},{"name":"PostgreSQL"},{"name":"Redis"},{"name":"Envoy"},{"name":"DeepSeek"},{"name":"Claude Sonnet"}]` | `[{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Microsoft Teams"},{"name":"PagerDuty"},{"name":"OpsGenie"},{"name":"Splunk On-Call"}]` |
| language.primary | Java | - |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | - |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://skywalking.apache.org/","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T13:41:37.822Z"}` | `{"type":"subscription","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Team","summary":"29€/month billed annually","features":["Profiler, Monitoring, Error Tracking","Unlimited projects, services, transactions, users","Basic Alerting","Integrations: E-Mail, Slack, Microsoft Teams"],"commitment":"annual","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":29,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}],"description":"Basic profiling and monitoring","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"lookback_days":"5","trace_triggers":"100","historical_data":"6 weeks","spans_per_trace":"500","traces_per_minute":"1","requests_per_month":"250K"}},{"free":false,"name":"Business","summary":"89€/month billed annually","features":["All Team features","Distributed Profiling","Traces in History","Advanced Tracepoint Triggers","Advanced Alerting","Integrations: PagerDuty, OpsGenie, Splunk On-Call, Webhooks"],"commitment":"annual","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":89,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}],"description":"Advanced profiling, distributed tracing, and alerting","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"lookback_days":"30","trace_triggers":"5000","historical_data":"15 months","spans_per_trace":"1500","traces_per_minute":"5","requests_per_month":"250K"}},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","summary":"Contact for pricing","features":["Unlimited historical data","Technical Account Manager","Priority Support","SSO with Azure Active Directory","Wire Transfer, AWS Marketplace, custom payment terms"],"description":"Custom deployment for high request volumes","contactSales":true,"includedLimits":{"historical_data":"Unlimited","requests_per_month":">1 billion"}}],"addOns":[{"name":"Premium Onboarding Workshop","components":[{"kind":"one_time","amount":249,"currency":"EUR"}]}],"summary":"From 29€/month. 14-day free trial.","currency":"EUR","freeTier":false,"sourceUrl":"https://tideways.com","retrievedAt":"2026-08-03T13:12:26.312Z","freeTrialDays":14,"startingPrice":{"amount":29,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"},"billingPeriods":["month","year"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | no |
| pricing.model | open_source | commercial |
| pricing.price_level | free | mid |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 89 | - |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.4.0","date":"2026-04-01T12:51:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.3.0","date":"2025-11-10T11:40:02Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.2.0","date":"2025-03-24T11:52:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.1.0","date":"2024-09-29T13:30:12Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.0.1","date":"2024-05-30T03:42:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v10.0.0","date":"2024-05-13T01:02:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v10.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.7.0","date":"2023-12-01T18:19:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.6.0","date":"2023-09-03T14:33:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.6.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.5.0","date":"2023-06-18T16:20:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.4.0","date":"2023-03-09T04:01:37Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.3.0","date":"2022-12-04T03:44:41Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.2.0","date":"2022-09-01T12:54:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.1.0","date":"2022-06-10T03:01:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v9.0.0","date":"2022-04-09T12:13:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.9.1","date":"2021-12-11T13:57:42Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.9.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.9.0","date":"2021-12-05T07:33:26Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.9.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.8.1","date":"2021-10-02T16:39:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.8.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.8.0","date":"2021-09-27T09:58:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.8.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.7.0","date":"2021-08-02T12:25:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.7.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/skywalking/releases/tag/v8.6.0","date":"2021-06-10T04:58:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.6.0"}]` | - |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.pci | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 7 | - |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.apache.skywalking%3Azipkin-receiver-plugin&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | - |

## Capabilities (APM Tools)

| Capability | Apache SkyWalking | Tideways |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Instrumentation** |  |  |
| Auto-instrumentation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Distributed tracing | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Insight** |  |  |
| Service map | ✓ | - |
| Code / continuous profiling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Database monitoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| Error analytics | ✓ | ✓ |
| Real-user monitoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| SLO / error-budget tracking | - | - |
| **Intelligence** |  |  |
| Anomaly / root-cause AI | ✓ | - |
| **Standards** |  |  |
| OpenTelemetry support | OTLP ingest | - |
| **Core** |  |  |
| Language agents | 10+ language agents supported | PHP |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud + self-hosted | Cloud only |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T17:13:10.947Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*