# Instana vs Parca

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Instana

| Attribute | Instana | Parca |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 58.9 (40% (low)) | 39.1 (54% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | - | 16 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | - | 40 |
| adoption.github_stars | - | 4,951 |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":true}` | `{"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | A monitoring and observability platform that automatically discovers and monitors applications and infrastructure, providing real-time full-stack visibility with AI-powered incident investigation and performance optimization. | Open source continuous profiling platform for analyzing CPU, memory, and IO usage down to the line number across entire infrastructure using eBPF. |
| features.capabilities | `{"rum":true,"hosting":"both","languages":"300+ technologies 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}` | `{"hosting":"self","languages":"C, C++, Rust, Go, and more","otel_support":"none","code_profiling":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` |
| integrations.count | 300 | 1 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"ServiceNow"},{"name":"AWS"},{"name":"Azure"},{"name":"Google Cloud"},{"name":"Oracle Cloud"},{"name":"IBM Cloud"},{"name":"Kubernetes"},{"name":"VMware Tanzu"},{"name":"Cloud Foundry"},{"name":"VSphere"},{"name":"PostgreSQL"},{"name":"MySQL"},{"name":"MongoDB"},{"name":"Redis"},{"name":"Cassandra"},{"name":"Oracle Database"},{"name":"IBM Db2"},{"name":"Microsoft SQL Server"},{"name":"SAP HANA"},{"name":"Apache Spark"},{"name":"Hadoop YARN"},{"name":"Apache HBase"},{"name":"ClickHouse"},{"name":"OpenSearch"},{"name":"GraphQL"},{"name":"AWS EC2"},{"name":"AWS RDS"},{"name":"AWS S3"},{"name":"Google Compute Engine"},{"name":"Redis Enterprise"},{"name":"JBoss Data Grid"},{"name":"Ceph"}]` | `[{"name":"Kubernetes"}]` |
| language.primary | - | TypeScript |
| license.spdx | - | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | - |
| platform.support | `{"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"subscription","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Essentials","features":["Infrastructure monitoring","Automatic infrastructure dynamic map","Cloud, hybrid and on-premise discovery","Kubernetes and orchestration monitoring"],"description":"Infrastructure monitoring and discovery","contactSales":true},{"free":false,"name":"Standard","features":["Distributed end-to-end tracing","Website and mobile observability","Code-level visibility","Synthetic monitoring","Business process monitoring","AI/LLM observability","Agentic AI root cause analysis","Incident summarization"],"description":"Full-stack observability including applications","contactSales":true}],"addOns":[{"name":"Managed PoPs","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"execution"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.0003,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Logs in context","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"gb"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.35,"currency":"USD"}]}],"currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T13:42:22.590Z","freeTrialDays":14,"billingPeriods":["year"]}` | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://www.parca.dev","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T20:43:59.814Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | quote | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | low | free |
| pricing.transparent | no | yes |
| release.cadence_days | - | 71 |
| release.history | - | `[{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.28.0","date":"2026-05-07T08:08:08Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.28.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.27.1","date":"2026-03-20T15:57:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.27.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.27.0","date":"2026-03-20T13:36:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.27.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.26.0","date":"2026-02-27T12:35:51Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.26.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.25.0","date":"2025-11-25T09:01:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.25.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.24.2","date":"2025-09-10T16:49:35Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.24.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.24.1","date":"2025-09-09T16:19:35Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.24.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.24.0","date":"2025-06-20T07:47:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.24.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.23.1","date":"2025-02-24T14:24:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.23.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.23.0","date":"2025-02-20T16:17:30Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.23.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.22.0","date":"2024-08-09T12:24:32Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.22.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.21.0","date":"2024-02-27T16:50:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.21.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.20.0","date":"2023-10-20T11:23:27Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.20.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.19.0","date":"2023-09-21T14:57:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.19.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.18.0","date":"2023-06-14T16:36:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.18.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.17.0","date":"2023-03-29T08:58:40Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.17.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.16.2","date":"2023-03-07T04:13:18Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.16.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.16.1","date":"2023-03-02T13:21:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.16.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.16.0","date":"2023-03-01T14:48:02Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.16.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/parca-dev/parca/releases/tag/v0.15.0","date":"2022-12-20T10:51:40Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.15.0"}]` |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.scorecard | - | 5.5 |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |
| security.vulnerabilities | - | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2Fparca-dev%2Fparca&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (APM Tools)

| Capability | Instana | Parca |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **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 | None |
| **Core** |  |  |
| Language agents | 300+ technologies supported | C, C++, Rust, Go, and more |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud + self-hosted | Self-hosted only |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T17:10:22.374Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*