# Blackfire vs Skylight

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Blackfire

| Attribute | Blackfire | Skylight |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 64.2 (72% (medium)) | 59 (49% (low)) |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true}` | `{"cloud":true}` |
| description.long | Blackfire is an Application Performance Management platform offering both monitoring and profiling solutions for PHP and Python applications. It helps teams identify performance bottlenecks, optimize code, and prevent production crises with automated profiling and actionable recommendations. | Skylight visualizes performance data to help identify and fix bottlenecks in Ruby and Rails apps. It includes endpoint analysis, SQL profiling, deploy tracking, and background job monitoring. |
| features.capabilities | `{"rum":true,"hosting":"cloud","languages":"PHP, Python","db_monitoring":true,"code_profiling":true,"distributed_tracing":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` | `{"rum":false,"hosting":"cloud","languages":"Ruby, Rails, Sinatra, Grape","db_monitoring":true,"code_profiling":true,"error_analytics":true,"anomaly_detection":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` |
| integrations.count | 6 | 7 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"PHPUnit"},{"name":"Symfony Functional Tests"},{"name":"Behat"},{"name":"GitHub Education"},{"name":"CI/CD pipelines"},{"name":"Upsun"}]` | `[{"name":"Sidekiq"},{"name":"DelayedJob"},{"name":"ActiveJob"},{"name":"Sinatra"},{"name":"Grape"},{"name":"GraphQL"},{"name":"MCP"}]` |
| market.availability | - | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"subscription","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Production","summary":"€158.25/month billed yearly (2 months free) or €189.90/month","features":["Profiling","Performance Monitoring","Continuous Profiling","Alerting","Continuous Testing","Integrations","Manual Assertions","Multi-dimensional profiling","Distributed profiling / Subprofiles","Automatic profiling","Synthetic Monitoring","Notifications","Performance tests","Performance recommendations","Quality recommendations","Security recommendations","Debug extension","Magento recommendation","Browser extension","CLI","SDK"],"minSeats":3,"commitment":"annual","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":158.25,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}],"description":"Full-featured plan for companies monitoring production data","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"users":"3","environments":"2","monitoring_traces":"1M/month","continuous_profiling":"5GB/month","front_end_observability":"1M/month"}},{"free":false,"name":"Development","summary":"€33.25/month billed yearly (yearly only)","features":["Profiling","Manual assertions","Upsun integration"],"minSeats":1,"commitment":"annual","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":33.25,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}],"description":"Low-cost option for fine-tuning applications before production","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"users":"1","environments":"1"}}],"addOns":[{"name":"Additional User","components":[{"kind":"per_unit","unit":"user","amount":24.92,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}]},{"name":"Additional Environment","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":58.25,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}]},{"name":"Additional Monitoring Traces (1M)","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":41.67,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}]},{"name":"Additional Continuous Profiling (1GB)","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":10,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}]},{"name":"Additional Front-end Observability (1M)","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":41.67,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}]},{"name":"Quality Recommendations","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":10.75,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}]},{"name":"Security Recommendations","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":10.75,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}]},{"name":"Debug Extension","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":10.75,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}]},{"name":"Magento Recommendations (Dev)","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":14.08,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}]},{"name":"Magento Recommendations (Prod)","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":49.92,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"}]}],"summary":"From €33.25/month (Development, annual) to €158.25/month (Production, annual with 2 months free). Demo environment available; free plan for GitHub Student Developer Pack members.","currency":"EUR","freeTier":false,"sourceUrl":"https://www.blackfire.io/pricing/","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T20:44:31.043Z","startingPrice":{"amount":33.25,"period":"month","currency":"EUR"},"billingPeriods":["month","year"]}` | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"100,000 traces per month","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"traces":"100k/month"}},{"free":false,"name":"Pay-as-you-go","summary":"Starting at $20/month","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":20,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Automatic tier adjustment based on monthly traces","contactSales":false}],"summary":"Free tier with 100,000 monthly traces; paid tiers starting at $20/month","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.skylight.io/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T20:48:14.422Z","freeTrialDays":30,"startingPrice":{"amount":20,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | no | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | mid | mid |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.hipaa | yes | - |
| security.iso27001 | yes | - |
| security.pci | yes | - |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |

## Capabilities (APM Tools)

| Capability | Blackfire | Skylight |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **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 | - | - |
| **Core** |  |  |
| Language agents | PHP, Python | Ruby, Rails, Sinatra, Grape |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud only | Cloud only |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T16:51:00.451Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*