# Better Stack vs Thanos

| Attribute | Better Stack | Thanos |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 60.3 (73% (medium)) | 57.3 (54% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | - | 51 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | - | 1,266 |
| adoption.github_stars | - | 14,188 |
| deployment.options | `{"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. | CNCF Incubating project extending Prometheus with global query view across multiple servers, unlimited retention via object storage, and downsampling capabilities. |
| features.capabilities | `{"apm":true,"rum":true,"logs":true,"hosting":"cloud","metrics":true,"on_call":true,"tracing":true,"alerting":true,"dashboards":true,"otel_native":true}` | `{"hosting":"self","metrics":true,"dashboards":true}` |
| integrations.count | 20 | 8 |
| 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":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"OpenTSDB"},{"name":"S3"},{"name":"GCP"},{"name":"Azure"},{"name":"Swift"},{"name":"Tencent COS"}]` |
| language.primary | - | Go |
| license.spdx | - | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"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":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://thanos.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T17:01:37.783Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | freemium | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | mid | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | - |
| release.cadence_days | - | 6 |
| release.history | - | `[{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.42.4","date":"2026-07-30T14:33:20Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.42.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.42.3","date":"2026-07-29T10:49:11Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.42.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.42.2","date":"2026-07-17T06:51:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.42.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.42.1","date":"2026-07-16T19:45:28Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.42.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.42.0","date":"2026-07-08T14:44:35Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.42.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.42.0-rc.2","date":"2026-06-30T13:06:27Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.42.0-rc.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.42.0-rc.1","date":"2026-06-25T07:16:42Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.42.0-rc.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.41.0","date":"2026-02-12T10:32:11Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.41.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.41.0-rc.1","date":"2026-02-11T10:41:41Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.41.0-rc.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.41.0-rc.0","date":"2026-02-09T14:03:57Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.41.0-rc.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.40.1","date":"2025-10-28T18:13:01Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.40.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.40.0","date":"2025-10-27T11:24:31Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.40.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.40.0-rc.0","date":"2025-10-21T13:02:52Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.40.0-rc.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.39.2","date":"2025-07-21T06:51:58Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.39.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.39.1","date":"2025-07-01T13:03:18Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.39.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.39.0","date":"2025-06-25T11:54:06Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.39.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.39.0-rc.0","date":"2025-06-20T04:45:58Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.39.0-rc.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.38.0","date":"2025-04-03T12:14:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.38.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.38.0-rc.1","date":"2025-04-01T07:07:33Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-rc.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/releases/tag/v0.38.0-rc.0","date":"2025-03-25T14:05:25Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.38.0-rc.0"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | yes | - |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | - | 8 |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |
| security.vulnerabilities | - | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2Fthanos-io%2Fthanos&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Observability Tools)

| Capability | Better Stack | Thanos |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **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 | Self-hosted only |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T14:24:54.527Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*