Grafana Tempo
Scale tracing with minimal operational cost and less complexity
- Also known as
- grafana-tempo
What is Grafana Tempo?
Grafana Tempo is an open-source distributed tracing backend designed for high-scale deployments with minimal operational complexity. It requires only object storage and is deeply integrated with Grafana, Prometheus, and Loki.
Grafana Tempo pricing
Plans, per-tier features and add-ons, dated and linked to live pricing. Pricing changes often; always verify at source before you rely on it.
Open source (free). Grafana Cloud integration from $19/month or $25k/year enterprise.
Open Source
FreeGrafana Tempo open source (AGPLv3)
Grafana Cloud Pro
- Platform fee includes limited trace retention and usage
- 30 days retention for traces
- 8x5 email support
Grafana Cloud Enterprise
Contact sales- Custom retention
- Premium support
- Deployment flexibility (Public Cloud, Federal Cloud, Bring Your Own Cloud)
What Grafana Tempo does
The capabilities that matter for distributed tracing tools, normalised so it lines up with every alternative. “-” means we haven't confirmed it, not that it's missing.
- Trace role
- Trace backend / store
- OpenTelemetry support
- OTel-native
- Multi-protocol (Jaeger + Zipkin + OTLP)
- ✓
- Trace search / filter by attributes
- ✓
- Service dependency graph
- ✓
- High-cardinality attribute exploration
- -
- Tail-based / dynamic sampling
- -
- Auto-instrumentation
- -
- Correlate traces with metrics/logs
- -
- Hosting
- -
- Storage backend
- object storage
Platform & deployment
Independently observed- CLI
- Web
- Cloud / SaaS
- Self-hosted
Integrations (6)
Independently observed- Grafana
- Prometheus
- Loki
- Jaeger
- Zipkin
- OpenTelemetry
Grafana Tempo alternatives
Other distributed tracing tools we track, ranked by the same independent score.
- OpenTelemetryThe open standard for telemetrylow · 37%
- SigNozThe Open Source Datadog Alternativelow · 37%
- UptraceOpenTelemetry-native observabilitylow · 48%
- OpenTelemetryThe open standard for telemetrylow · 47%
- JaegerOpen source, distributed tracing platformlow · 15%
- OdigosAsk Production Anythinglow · 12%
The Vioscale score: one lens on the evidence
Not user reviews and not a paid placement: a confidence-weighted blend of the independent signals below (adoption, activity, security posture, and more), which you can sort and re-weight yourself. Vendors can correct their listing but can never move their rank, and stars are weighted low as a vanity metric. It is one way to read the evidence for Grafana Tempo, not the verdict.
| Signal | Score | Weight | Contribution | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Security Posture | 90 | 22.00 | 1980.0 | ✓ |
| Reliability | 50 | 30.00 | 1500.0 | ✓ |
| Pricing Transparency | 100 | 12.00 | 1200.0 | ✓ |
| Github Activity | 56 | 18.00 | 1007.6 | ✓ |
| Release Cadence | 94 | 10.00 | 938.9 | ✓ |
| Capabilities | 58 | 12.00 | 693.8 | ✓ |
| Price Level | 50 | 8.00 | 400.0 | ✓ |
| Integrations | 24 | 16.00 | 388.9 | ✓ |
| Github Stars | 70 | 5.00 | 352.1 | ✓ |
| Package Downloads | 0 | 26.00 | 0.0 | - |
| Stackoverflow Activity | 0 | 12.00 | 0.0 | - |
Computed . Re-weight it by intent, or see the full method.
All data & sourcesshow ↓
Every value we hold, with its source, retrieval date, and confidence. This is the evidence behind the score: don't trust it, verify it.
Activity
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Commits last 30d | 59 | mediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 65% |
Adoption
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Github stars | 5,401 | highsource · 2026-08-01 · 90% |
Features
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Capabilities | {"trace_role":"backend","service_map":true,"otel_support":"native","trace_search":true,"multi_protocol":true,"storage_backend":"object storage"} | mediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 60% |
Integrations
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Count | 6 | mediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 60% |
Language
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | Go | highsource · 2026-08-01 · 90% |
License
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Spdx | AGPL-3.0 | highsource · 2026-08-01 · 95% |
Pricing
Release
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Cadence days | 11 | mediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 70% |
Reliability
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Status page | Yes | mediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 60% |