Observability and monitoring are the cornerstone of resilient, high-performing applications. Nearly every IT or software engineering leader we meet emphasizes the importance of understanding and diagnosing what's happening with their applications at all times. Clear and concise visibility into your applications is no longer optional.
Our DevOps platform, Cycle , comes baked with application and infrastructure-level observability to meet most needs. While we're committed to making Cycle a full observability and monitoring stack, some teams prefer to bring their own tools. As a Kubernetes alternative, many users arrive with an existing monitoring suite, which we integrate easily.
Observability has become its own industry, already spawning titans and redefining uptime. The market in 2023 reached USD 2.3 billion and continues to grow. The tool landscape can be overwhelming, so we've compiled a list to help clarify your choices.
What is Observability and Monitoring?
Observability is the ability to measure a system's internal state via logs, traces, and metrics:
- Logs: Timestamped records of events in an application or system.
- Traces: The flow of a request through a distributed system.
- Metrics: Numerical values representing performance or status over time.
Monitoring is the process of collecting, aggregating, and analyzing that observability data. Monitoring helps you detect when something breaks; observability helps you understand why.
Top 5 Observability and Monitoring Tools
1. Prometheus + Grafana
The classic open-source duo. Prometheus excels at metric collection and storage; Grafana offers flexible dashboards and visualizations. Ideal for teams needing deep metrics and alerting—but setup and maintenance can be complex.
Key Features:
- Large community support
- Customizable queries and visualizations
- Strong alerting and integration options
Challenges:
- Not easy to set up or customize
- Ongoing maintenance required
- Fragmented ecosystem (often needs additional tools for full coverage)
Teams with prior experience or strong DevOps capabilities will find this stack very powerful.
2. Datadog
A well-known SaaS platform offering end-to-end observability: metrics, logs, and traces. Great for large-scale enterprise environments with sophisticated monitoring needs and AIOps capabilities.
Key Features:
- Unified dashboards for metrics, traces, logs, and uptime
- Powerful APM and log correlation
Challenges:
- Pricing can be prohibitive at scale
- Dashboard setup has a learning curve
Datadog is reliable for teams of all sizes, provided budget isn't a barrier.
3. Uptrace
An open-source APM built on OpenTelemetry and ClickHouse. Uptrace unifies traces, metrics, logs, and service maps in a lightweight package—ideal for teams wanting full observability without high SaaS costs.
Key Features:
- Native OpenTelemetry support
- Unified tracing, metrics, and logs
- Service map for dependencies
- Self-hosted and hosted options
Challenges:
- Self-hosted version requires managing ClickHouse and backend
- May lack some enterprise SaaS features
Uptrace is perfect for teams prioritizing cost and open-source flexibility.
4. OpenTelemetry
A vendor-neutral, open-source framework for collecting observability data. OpenTelemetry supports metrics, logs, and traces with drop-in integrations—though it's not a complete backend on its own.
Key Features:
- Drop-in integrations and instrumentation
- Community-driven
- Highly flexible
Challenges:
- Still maturing
- Requires a tool like Prometheus or Grafana for visualization and alerting
OpenTelemetry is a great foundation for custom observability pipelines.
5. New Relic
Evolving from an APM to a full observability suite, New Relic offers comprehensive coverage—metrics, logs, traces, events—in a single dashboard. It's well suited for larger teams seeking consolidation.
Key Features:
- Full-stack observability
- Advanced analytics
- Extensive infrastructure integrations
Challenges:
- Can be overkill for smaller teams
- Steep learning curve and potentially high cost
New Relic shines for enterprises that need deep coverage and can invest in training.
Wrapping Up
Monitoring and observability can be assembled from individual tools or consumed as an all-in-one solution. Each approach has trade‑offs in flexibility, cost, and ease of use.
Critical applications demand robust visibility: if an outage occurs, you need to know what happened, when, and why, and ensure it doesn't recur. Cycle includes built-in monitoring and is evolving into a full observability platform, giving customers clear insights at both application and infrastructure levels.
We'll continue to enhance Cycle's observability capabilities as we strive to be more than a Kubernetes alternative—a unified DevOps platform.