About
Groundcover is an all-in-one observability platform designed for engineering teams that refuse to compromise on data volume, cost, or privacy. Unlike traditional SaaS observability tools, Groundcover uses a Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) architecture — deploying fully managed observability infrastructure directly inside your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), whether on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or on-premises environments. At its core, Groundcover is powered by an eBPF sensor that streams enriched telemetry across your entire stack with zero code changes and zero instrumentation overhead. It automatically correlates logs, traces, and metrics from infrastructure to applications to LLMs, eliminating the manual context-stitching that burdens engineering teams. Key capabilities include Infrastructure Monitoring, Application Performance Monitoring (APM), Log Management, Real User Monitoring (RUM), Synthetic Performance Monitoring, and LLM Observability for AI-powered applications. All features are available with no tiers, no gates, and no usage-based penalties — just simple, flat per-host pricing. Groundcover is ideal for companies in regulated industries, those with strict data residency requirements, or any team looking to replace expensive SaaS observability stacks with a cost-efficient, fully-owned alternative. Teams report cutting observability costs in half while achieving full coverage across production, development, and testing environments.
Key Features
- BYOC Architecture: Deploys fully managed observability infrastructure inside your own VPC, eliminating SaaS data exposure and markups while giving you complete data sovereignty.
- eBPF-Powered Zero-Instrumentation: Groundcover's eBPF sensor captures enriched telemetry across your entire stack with no code changes, no SDK integrations, and no implementation cycles.
- LLM Observability: Monitor, analyze, and secure LLM-powered applications with dedicated tooling for AI workloads, including request tracing and performance analytics.
- Unified Logs, Metrics & Traces: Automatically correlates infrastructure metrics, application traces, and logs into a single context-rich view — no manual stitching required.
- Flat Per-Host Pricing: No ingestion taxes, no rate limiting, no sampling. Infinite cardinality and retention at a simple, predictable per-host rate.
Use Cases
- Engineering teams migrating away from expensive SaaS observability platforms like Datadog or New Relic to reduce costs while retaining full data coverage.
- Companies in regulated industries (healthcare, finance, government) requiring strict data residency and privacy controls for their monitoring infrastructure.
- DevOps and SRE teams needing unified visibility across infrastructure, microservices, and Kubernetes clusters without complex instrumentation.
- AI product teams monitoring LLM-powered applications for performance, reliability, and security in production environments.
- Organizations running hybrid or on-premises workloads that need observability coverage beyond what traditional cloud-only SaaS tools support.
Pros
- Massive Cost Savings: BYOC architecture eliminates SaaS markups and eliminates the need to sample or limit data, with teams reporting up to 50% cost reductions.
- Zero Code Changes Required: eBPF-based deployment means instant full-stack coverage with no SDK integration, instrumentation, or engineering overhead.
- Full Data Privacy & Control: All data stays within your own VPC — ideal for regulated industries and organizations with strict data residency requirements.
- All-Inclusive Feature Access: Every capability (APM, logs, LLM observability, RUM, synthetic monitoring) is included with no feature tiers or usage gates.
Cons
- Requires Cloud or On-Prem Infrastructure: BYOC architecture means you need an existing cloud account or on-prem environment to deploy — it's not a fully hosted SaaS solution.
- Initial Setup Complexity: While deployment is managed, configuring BYOC within your VPC may require DevOps or infrastructure expertise to get started.
- Per-Host Pricing Can Scale: Flat per-host pricing is predictable but can become expensive for organizations with very large numbers of hosts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does BYOC mean in Groundcover?
BYOC stands for Bring Your Own Cloud. It means Groundcover's observability infrastructure is deployed and runs entirely within your own Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), so your data never leaves your environment. Groundcover manages the deployment and maintenance on your behalf.
Does Groundcover require code changes or SDK installation?
No. Groundcover uses an eBPF-powered sensor that captures telemetry at the kernel level, requiring zero code changes, zero SDK integrations, and zero instrumentation. It provides instant full-stack coverage out of the box.
What environments does Groundcover support?
Groundcover supports all major cloud providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure), Kubernetes environments, and on-premises data centers — making it suitable for hybrid and regulated infrastructure setups.
Does Groundcover support LLM and AI application monitoring?
Yes. Groundcover includes dedicated LLM Observability capabilities to monitor, analyze, and secure LLM-powered applications, including request tracing and performance analytics for AI workloads.
How is Groundcover priced?
Groundcover uses flat, predictable per-host pricing with no ingestion taxes, no sampling penalties, and no feature tiers. A free trial is available to get started without a credit card.
