# OpenTelemetry vs Thanos

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** OpenTelemetry

| Attribute | OpenTelemetry | Thanos |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 68.1 (48% (low)) | 59.3 (53% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 51 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | - | 1,266 |
| adoption.github_stars | 7,548 | 14,204 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | 110,515,759 | - |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"A standardized platform for instrumenting applications to collect traces, metrics, and logs. Data is collected through language-specific SDKs and services, then exported to any observability backend without requiring application code changes. It is indexed under Distributed Tracing Tools.","source":"https://opentelemetry.io","question":"What is OpenTelemetry?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"OpenTelemetry is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://opentelemetry.io","question":"Is OpenTelemetry free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"OpenTelemetry supports a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://opentelemetry.io","question":"What platforms does OpenTelemetry support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. OpenTelemetry can be deployed cloud / SaaS, hybrid, on-premise and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://opentelemetry.io","question":"Can OpenTelemetry be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 3 integrations for OpenTelemetry, including Jaeger, Prometheus and Zipkin. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://opentelemetry.io","question":"What does OpenTelemetry integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed GDPR for OpenTelemetry. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as OpenTelemetry not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://opentelemetry.io/bn/docs/security/handling-sensitive-data/","question":"What security certifications does OpenTelemetry have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"Yes. OpenTelemetry is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector","question":"Is OpenTelemetry open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"answer":"CNCF Incubating project extending Prometheus with global query view across multiple servers, unlimited retention via object storage, and downsampling capabilities. It is indexed under Observability Tools.","source":"https://thanos.io","question":"What is Thanos?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Thanos is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://thanos.io","question":"Is Thanos free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Thanos supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://thanos.io","question":"What platforms does Thanos support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Thanos can be deployed self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://thanos.io","question":"Can Thanos be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 8 integrations for Thanos, including Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTSDB, S3, GCP, Azure, Swift and Tencent COS. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://thanos.io","question":"What does Thanos integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Thanos is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos","question":"Is Thanos open source?","confidence":0.95}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | OpenTelemetry is an open-source framework that equips developers with SDKs, libraries, agents, and collector services to capture distributed traces, metrics, and logs from applications. It enables vendor-neutral observability by allowing teams to instrument code once and export telemetry data to any backend system without vendor lock-in. | CNCF Incubating project extending Prometheus with global query view across multiple servers, unlimited retention via object storage, and downsampling capabilities. |
| features.capabilities | `{"logs":true,"hosting":"both","metrics":true,"tracing":true,"trace_role":"platform","otel_native":true,"service_map":true,"otel_support":"native","trace_search":true,"multi_protocol":true,"metrics_correlation":true,"auto_instrumentation":"agent"}` | `{"hosting":"self","metrics":true,"tracing":true,"alerting":true,"dashboards":true,"otel_native":true}` |
| integrations.count | 2 | 8 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Jaeger"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Zipkin"}]` | `[{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Grafana"},{"name":"OpenTSDB"},{"name":"S3"},{"name":"GCP"},{"name":"Azure"},{"name":"Swift"},{"name":"Tencent COS"},{"name":"Alertmanager","native":true,"category":"alerting"}]` |
| language.primary | Go | Go |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | - |
| platform.support | `{"windows":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://opentelemetry.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-24T22:37:05.387Z"}` | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://thanos.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T17:01:37.783Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | open_source |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | - |
| release.cadence_days | 14 | 6 |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.160.0","date":"2026-09-02T14:38:58Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.160.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.159.0","date":"2026-08-17T17:37:33Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.159.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.158.0","date":"2026-08-04T13:44:21Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.158.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.157.0","date":"2026-07-21T12:38:34Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.157.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.156.0","date":"2026-07-07T07:29:34Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.156.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.155.0","date":"2026-06-23T16:56:18Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.155.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.154.0","date":"2026-06-08T23:51:21Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.154.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.153.0","date":"2026-05-25T08:09:17Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.153.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.152.1","date":"2026-05-19T19:53:43Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.152.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.152.0","date":"2026-05-11T11:48:19Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.152.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.151.0","date":"2026-04-28T18:57:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.151.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.150.0","date":"2026-04-13T11:06:56Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.150.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.149.0","date":"2026-03-31T13:43:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.149.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.148.0","date":"2026-03-17T13:42:51Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.148.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.147.0","date":"2026-03-02T15:09:00Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.147.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.146.1","date":"2026-02-18T13:48:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.146.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.146.0","date":"2026-02-17T21:22:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.146.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.145.0","date":"2026-02-02T18:22:47Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.145.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.144.0","date":"2026-01-20T09:41:37Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.144.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector/releases/tag/v0.143.0","date":"2026-01-05T20:27:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.143.0"}]` | `[{"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 | 7.8 | 8.2 |
| 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 | OpenTelemetry | 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: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-09-21T03:44:01.566Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*