OpenObserve
Open source observability platform for logs, metrics, traces, frontend monitoring, pipelines and LLM observability with 140x lower storage costs than Elasticsearch
19.6K+
GitHub Stars
6,000+
Organizations
140x
Lower Storage Cost
Overview
OpenObserve is an open source, petabyte-scale observability platform that unifies logs, metrics, traces, real user monitoring (RUM), and session replay into a single tool. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, it was built as a sophisticated, simple and highly performant alternative to Datadog, Splunk, and Elasticsearch. It deploys as a single binary or Helm chart, uses Apache Parquet columnar storage with ~40x compression, and supports SQL and PromQL for querying without proprietary query languages. OpenObserve is ISO 27001 and SOC2 Type II certified with 6,000+ organizations relying on the platform.
The Verdict
Who Should Use OpenObserve?
Best For
- Teams escaping Datadog, Splunk, or Elasticsearch costs
- DevOps and platform teams needing unified observability
- Organizations that want self-hosted data sovereignty
- Teams with high-volume log and metric ingestion
- Companies wanting OpenTelemetry-native, no vendor lock-in
- Startups to Fortune 100 needing predictable flat per-GB pricing
Not Ideal For
- Teams needing zero-ops turnkey SaaS (use Datadog)
- Organizations requiring mature APM ecosystem integrations
- Teams without Kubernetes or infrastructure management skills
- Environments already deep in Grafana/Prometheus ecosystems
What's Great
- 140x lower storage costs vs. Elasticsearch (Apache Parquet + compression)
- Unified logs, metrics, traces, RUM, and session replay in one binary
- Single binary or Helm chart deployment — no complex infrastructure
- OpenTelemetry native, no proprietary agents or query languages
- Flat per-GB pricing — no per-user or per-host charges
- AI SRE Agent for automated root cause analysis
- SQL and PromQL querying support
- ISO 27001 and SOC2 Type II certified
Watch Out For
- AI SRE Agent and advanced pipelines gated behind Enterprise plan
- Smaller ecosystem and fewer pre-built integrations than Datadog
- Self-hosted ops requires infrastructure management knowledge
- Community and documentation still maturing vs. established players
- Enterprise pricing is custom — costs unclear for larger deployments
Pricing
Open Source
$0
Self-hosted, full features, AGPL-3.0 license
Professional Cloud
$0.50/GB
Ingestion + $0.01/GB query, 14-day free trial
Self-Hosted Enterprise
Free up to 50 GB/day
SSO, RBAC, audit trail, sensitive data redaction
Enterprise Cloud
Custom
AI SRE agent, incident management, BYOC option
View all features & details
Core Capabilities
- Log management with full-text search
- Metrics monitoring (Prometheus-compatible)
- Distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry native)
- Real User Monitoring (RUM)
- Session replay and Core Web Vitals
- Error tracking and alerting
- Custom dashboards and visualizations
- Incident management and on-call routing
Data Ingestion Sources
- OpenTelemetry Collector
- Fluent Bit, Fluentd, Vector
- AWS CloudWatch and Kinesis Firehose
- Prometheus scrapers and Telegraf
- Filebeat and Elasticsearch APIs
- Syslog
- eBPF zero-code instrumentation (OBI)
- Python, Go, TypeScript, Node.js SDKs
Deployment Options
- Single binary (Linux, macOS, Windows)
- Kubernetes Helm chart
- Amazon EKS, Azure AKS, Google GKE
- Terraform-based provisioning
- Cloud: US, EU, Asia Pacific regions
- Bring-your-own-cloud (Enterprise)
Enterprise Features
- AI SRE Agent for root cause analysis
- No-code pipeline transformations
- Sensitive data redaction
- SSO and RBAC
- Audit trail
- Multi-organization data isolation
- Federated search across clusters
- Anomaly detection and alerting
How It Compares
| Feature | OpenObserve | Datadog | Splunk | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open Source | Yes (AGPL-3.0) | No | No | Yes (MIT) |
| Self-Hosted | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Unified Platform | Logs + Metrics + Traces + RUM | All-in-one | All-in-one | Logs + Metrics + Traces |
| Storage Cost | 140x lower than ES | High | Very High | Moderate |
| Deployment | Single binary | SaaS only | Complex | Docker/K8s |
| Query Language | SQL + PromQL | Proprietary DQL | SPL | SQL |
| Per-User Pricing | None | Yes | Yes | None |
| AI Root Cause Analysis | Enterprise | Yes | Yes | No |
| OTel Native | Yes | Partial | Partial | Yes |
| Starting Cost | $0 (self-host) | ~$23/host/mo | High | $0 (self-host) |
Storage Architecture
- Apache Parquet columnar format
- ~40x compression vs. raw JSON
- Petabyte-scale ingestion support
- 1 PB queried in ~2 seconds (internal benchmark)
No Lock-In by Design
- OpenTelemetry for all instrumentation
- SQL and PromQL — no proprietary syntax
- Elasticsearch-compatible ingestion API
- AGPL-3.0 open source license
User Reviews
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