# Better Stack vs Sematext

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Sematext

| Attribute | Better Stack | Sematext |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 60.3 (73% (medium)) | 69.1 (49% (low)) |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | 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. | Cloud-based and self-hosted observability solution that integrates infrastructure monitoring, log management, distributed tracing, and synthetic monitoring in a unified interface. Offers per-product, per-host, or per-monitor billing with no hidden overage charges. |
| features.capabilities | `{"apm":true,"rum":true,"logs":true,"hosting":"cloud","metrics":true,"on_call":true,"tracing":true,"alerting":true,"dashboards":true,"otel_native":true}` | `{"apm":true,"rum":true,"logs":true,"hosting":"both","metrics":true,"on_call":true,"tracing":true,"alerting":true,"dashboards":true,"otel_native":false}` |
| integrations.count | 20 | 100 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Microsoft Teams"},{"name":"Linear"},{"name":"GitHub"},{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"Datadog"},{"name":"Notion"},{"name":"Sentry"},{"name":"Zapier"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Zabbix"},{"name":"Azure"},{"name":"AWS"},{"name":"Google Cloud"},{"name":"New Relic"},{"name":"Mixpanel"},{"name":"Intercom"},{"name":"Front"},{"name":"Drift"},{"name":"Terraform Provider"}]` | `[{"name":"Syslog"},{"name":"Angular"},{"name":"Custom Webhooks"},{"name":"Kubernetes"},{"name":"GitLab CI/CD"},{"name":"Microsoft Teams"},{"name":"Akka"},{"name":"Ember"},{"name":"Next.js"},{"name":"Elasticsearch"},{"name":"Logstash"},{"name":"Kibana"},{"name":"Apache Solr"},{"name":"OpenSearch"}]` |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"ios":true,"web":true,"android":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"subscription","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free","summary":"Free tier for personal projects","features":["10 monitors & heartbeats","1 status page","Slack & email alerts","100,000 exceptions per month","5,000 session replays"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Personal projects with limited monitoring and log retention","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"metrics":"30 GB","monitors":"10","exceptions":"100,000/month","heartbeats":"10","status_pages":"1","logs_retained":"3 GB (3 days)","session_replays":"5,000","traces_retained":"3 GB (3 days)","web_events_retained":"3 GB (3 days)"}},{"free":false,"name":"Responder","summary":"$29/month billed annually or $34/month billed monthly","features":["1 responder license","Unlimited phone call alerts","Unlimited SMS alerts","On-call scheduling & iOS/Android apps","Incident management with AI SRE","Slack & MS Teams integration","AI-written post-mortems","1 status page included","Reporting & analytics","Zapier & webhook integrations"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":29,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"kind":"fixed","amount":34,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Single on-call responder with full platform access and unlimited phone/SMS alerts","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Telemetry - Nano","summary":"$25/month annually or $30/month monthly","features":["40 GB traces","40 GB logs","40 GB metrics","30 day retention"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":25,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"kind":"fixed","amount":30,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"logs":"40 GB/month","traces":"40 GB/month","metrics":"40 GB/month","retention":"30 days"}},{"free":false,"name":"Telemetry - Micro","summary":"$100/month annually or $120/month monthly","features":["160 GB traces","160 GB logs","160 GB metrics","30 day retention"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":100,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"kind":"fixed","amount":120,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"logs":"160 GB/month","traces":"160 GB/month","metrics":"160 GB/month","retention":"30 days"}},{"free":false,"name":"Telemetry - Mega","summary":"$210/month annually or $250/month monthly","features":["340 GB traces","340 GB logs","340 GB metrics","30 day retention"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":210,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"kind":"fixed","amount":250,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"logs":"340 GB/month","traces":"340 GB/month","metrics":"340 GB/month","retention":"30 days"}},{"free":false,"name":"Telemetry - Tera","summary":"$420/month annually or $500/month monthly","features":["700 GB traces","700 GB logs","700 GB metrics","30 day retention"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":420,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"kind":"fixed","amount":500,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"logs":"700 GB/month","traces":"700 GB/month","metrics":"700 GB/month","retention":"30 days"}}],"addOns":[{"name":"AI SRE Tokens","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"million tokens"},"kind":"metered","amount":5,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Slack & MS Teams Incident Management","components":[{"kind":"per_unit","unit":"responder","amount":9,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Additional Status Pages","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":12,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"kind":"fixed","amount":15,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Call Routing per Phone Number","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":208,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"kind":"fixed","amount":250,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Status Page - White-Label","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":208,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"kind":"fixed","amount":250,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Status Page - Custom Domain & Additional Subscribers","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":40,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}]}],"summary":"From $25/month for telemetry or $29/month for on-call. Free tier included. Annual commitment provides ~22-25% savings.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://betterstack.com/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T16:53:17.532Z","freeTrialDays":60,"startingPrice":{"amount":25,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month","year"]}` | `{"type":"usage","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Logs","summary":"From $5/month","features":["Log ingestion","Log analytics","Searching and filtering"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"month"},"kind":"metered","amount":5,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Log management and analytics","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Infra Monitoring","summary":"From $2.8/host/month","features":["Host metrics","Container monitoring","System performance"],"components":[{"kind":"per_unit","unit":"host","amount":2.8,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Real-time infrastructure monitoring","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Service Monitoring","summary":"From $8.64/month","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":8.64,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Service-level performance metrics","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Tracing","summary":"From $19/month","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":19,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Zero-code distributed tracing","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Synthetics","summary":"From $2/monitor/month","features":["API monitoring","Uptime monitoring","Performance monitoring"],"components":[{"kind":"per_unit","unit":"monitor","amount":2,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Synthetic monitoring for APIs and websites","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Synthetics Standard","summary":"$29/month","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":29,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Packaged synthetic monitoring plan","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Synthetics Pro","summary":"$99/month","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":99,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Advanced synthetic monitoring plan","contactSales":false}],"summary":"From $2.8/host/month for infrastructure monitoring. 14-day free trial, no commitment. Metered pricing with no overage charges.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://sematext.com/pricing/","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T21:36:12.631Z","freeTrialDays":14,"startingPrice":{"amount":2,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | freemium | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | mid | low |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |

## Capabilities (Observability Tools)

| Capability | Better Stack | Sematext |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Signals** |  |  |
| Metrics | ✓ | ✓ |
| Log management | ✓ | ✓ |
| Distributed tracing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Application performance monitoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| Real-user monitoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Response** |  |  |
| Alerting | ✓ | ✓ |
| On-call / incident management | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Insight** |  |  |
| Dashboards | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Standards** |  |  |
| OpenTelemetry-native | ✓ | ✗ |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud only | Cloud + self-hosted |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T17:11:55.071Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*