# Elastic Observability vs Thanos

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Elastic Observability

| Attribute | Elastic Observability | Thanos |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 64.6 (60% (medium)) | 57.3 (54% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 51 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 18,551 | 1,266 |
| adoption.github_stars | 77,862 | 14,188 |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":true,"air_gapped":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | A unified observability platform that ingests logs, metrics, and traces to provide real-time system insights powered by AI agents. Elastic Observability automates root cause analysis and incident response while maintaining operator visibility and control, with support for open standards and multi-cloud deployment. | 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":"both","metrics":true,"on_call":true,"tracing":true,"alerting":true,"dashboards":true,"otel_native":true}` | `{"hosting":"self","metrics":true,"dashboards":true}` |
| integrations.count | 450 | 8 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"Anthropic"},{"name":"Jina AI"},{"name":"Amazon Bedrock"},{"name":"Azure OpenAI Service"},{"name":"Google Vertex AI"},{"name":"Mistral"},{"name":"Cohere"},{"name":"Meta"},{"name":"NVIDIA"},{"name":"Hugging Face"},{"name":"IBM watsonx"},{"name":"Alibaba Cloud"},{"name":"LangChain"},{"name":"LlamaIndex"},{"name":"Unstructured.io"},{"name":"Aryn"},{"name":"Vectorize.io"},{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Jira"},{"name":"ServiceNow"},{"name":"PagerDuty"},{"name":"Microsoft Teams"},{"name":"xMatters"},{"name":"IBM Resilient"},{"name":"Webhook"},{"name":"AWS S3"},{"name":"Logstash"},{"name":"Beats"},{"name":"Filebeat"},{"name":"Metricbeat"},{"name":"Heartbeat"},{"name":"Elastic Agent"},{"name":"Red Hat"},{"name":"Kubernetes"},{"name":"Docker"}]` | `[{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"OpenTSDB"},{"name":"S3"},{"name":"GCP"},{"name":"Azure"},{"name":"Swift"},{"name":"Tencent COS"}]` |
| language.primary | Java | Go |
| license.spdx | - | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":["US","GB"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | - |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"web":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"quote","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free","summary":"Free and open source","features":["Elasticsearch","Kibana","Data ingestion via OTel, Logstash, Beats","Native authentication and TLS encryption","Basic monitoring","APM, logging, metrics","Alerting","Community support"],"description":"Open source Elasticsearch and Kibana stack","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Platinum","summary":"Contact sales","features":["Everything in Free","Single sign-on (SSO), LDAP/Active Directory","Field/document-level security","Audit logging","Anomaly detection for logs/metrics","ELSER semantic search","Cross-cluster replication","Automated threat discovery with ML","Behavioral ransomware protection","Log categorization","Service maps","Tail-based sampling","Service Level Objectives","APM correlations","24/7/365 premium support"],"description":"Advanced security, machine learning, and high availability","contactSales":true},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","summary":"Contact sales","features":["Everything in Platinum","Searchable snapshots on S3","Attack Discovery (GenAI security)","Universal Profiling","Cross-cluster search","Elastic Agent Builder for RAG","Jina AI models for semantic search","Inference Service Management","Hybrid search and RAG","Semantic reranking","Learn-to-Rank personalization","DiskBBQ for vector optimization","Elastic Workflows","Endpoint response actions","Elastic AI Assistant for Observability","AI-assisted log parsing","Reduced storage for logs/metrics/traces","Central as-code configuration"],"description":"Advanced AI, searchable snapshots, and comprehensive orchestration","contactSales":true}],"summary":"Free tier available. Platinum and Enterprise require contacting sales.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.elastic.co/pricing/self-managed","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T11:09:40.919Z","freeTrialDays":14}` | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://thanos.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T17:01:37.783Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | low | free |
| pricing.transparent | no | - |
| release.cadence_days | - | 6 |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.5.2","date":"2026-08-20T16:44:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.5.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.5.1","date":"2026-08-11T17:58:01Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.5.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.5","date":"2026-08-11T17:57:54Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.20","date":"2026-08-11T18:24:43Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.20"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.5.0","date":"2026-08-04T11:46:37Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.5.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.4","date":"2026-07-21T12:56:20Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.3.8","date":"2026-07-21T12:56:46Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.19","date":"2026-07-21T13:28:17Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.19"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.18","date":"2026-06-30T16:43:41Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.18"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.3.7","date":"2026-06-30T16:47:02Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.3","date":"2026-06-30T14:30:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.17","date":"2026-06-23T13:59:04Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.17"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.3.6","date":"2026-06-23T14:09:56Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.2","date":"2026-05-28T14:59:44Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.3.5","date":"2026-05-28T14:59:30Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.16","date":"2026-05-28T14:59:08Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.16"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.1","date":"2026-05-12T18:02:29Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.4.0","date":"2026-05-05T15:15:40Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v8.19.15","date":"2026-04-30T15:24:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v8.19.15"},{"url":"https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/releases/tag/v9.3.4","date":"2026-04-30T15:24:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v9.3.4"}]` | `[{"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.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | 6.9 | 8 |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":45,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.elasticsearch%3Aelasticsearch&per_page=100","last_12m":2,"max_severity":"HIGH"}` | `{"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 | Elastic Observability | 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 + self-hosted | Self-hosted only |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T17:06:48.111Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*