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About
SigNoz is a fully open-source observability platform built natively on OpenTelemetry, designed to replace costly proprietary tools like Datadog and New Relic. It consolidates application performance monitoring (APM), distributed tracing, log management, infrastructure metrics, customizable dashboards, and alerting into one unified platform — eliminating the complexity of managing multiple disparate observability tools. Powered by ClickHouse — the same columnar database trusted by Uber and Cloudflare — SigNoz delivers blazing-fast query performance and handles 10TB+ of data ingestion per day. It supports ingest from 50+ sources and offers flexible querying via a DIY query builder, PromQL, and native ClickHouse SQL. As an OpenTelemetry-first platform, SigNoz supports full semantic convention coverage, correlated logs/metrics/traces, and span-based events for rich debugging context. Its LLM/AI Observability module lets teams track LLM API calls, analyze performance, and monitor token usage across AI applications. Deployment is fully flexible: use SigNoz Cloud for a managed experience or self-host on your own infrastructure for complete data sovereignty. Hundreds of companies — from early-stage startups to public enterprises across all five continents — rely on SigNoz to build more reliable, observable software. It is ideal for developers, DevOps engineers, and platform teams who want enterprise-grade observability without vendor lock-in.
Key Features
- Unified Observability in One Platform: Combines APM, distributed tracing, log management, infrastructure metrics, dashboards, and alerting so teams never need to switch between multiple tools.
- OpenTelemetry-Native Architecture: Built from the ground up for OpenTelemetry with full semantic convention support, enabling vendor-lock-in-free instrumentation across any language or framework.
- LLM/AI Observability: Dedicated module to track LLM API calls, analyze model performance, and monitor token usage across AI and machine learning applications.
- ClickHouse-Powered High-Performance Storage: Uses ClickHouse as its columnar datastore for extremely fast queries and proven handling of 10TB+ daily data ingestion in production workloads.
- Flexible Deployment & Querying: Deploy on your own infrastructure or use SigNoz Cloud. Query data using a DIY query builder, PromQL, or native ClickHouse SQL for any use case.
Use Cases
- Monitoring microservices and APIs with distributed tracing to identify latency bottlenecks and performance regressions in production
- Centralizing logs from multiple services and infrastructure components for unified search, filtering, and root-cause analysis
- Replacing expensive SaaS observability tools like Datadog with a cost-effective, self-hosted open-source alternative
- Tracking LLM API call performance, token usage, error rates, and costs across AI-powered product features
- Setting up infrastructure monitoring dashboards and proactive alerting for on-call engineering teams
Pros
- Truly Open Source, No Vendor Lock-In: OpenTelemetry-native instrumentation means you can change backends without re-instrumenting your codebase, and self-hosting keeps all data under your control.
- All-in-One Observability Stack: Replaces Datadog, New Relic, and multiple point solutions with a single platform covering logs, metrics, traces, alerts, and AI monitoring.
- Proven Scale with Cost Efficiency: ClickHouse-backed storage handles massive data volumes at a fraction of the cost of proprietary SaaS alternatives, with usage-based cloud pricing.
- Correlated Signals for Faster Debugging: Logs, metrics, and traces are correlated via OpenTelemetry semantic conventions, giving engineers richer context to resolve incidents faster.
Cons
- Self-Hosting Requires Infrastructure Expertise: Running SigNoz on your own infrastructure demands DevOps knowledge for setup, scaling, and maintenance — which can be a challenge for smaller teams.
- Smaller Ecosystem Than Incumbents: Compared to Datadog or New Relic, SigNoz has fewer third-party integrations, marketplace plugins, and community tutorials available.
- Cloud Costs Scale with Data Volume: The managed cloud tier uses usage-based pricing, which can become significant for high-volume workloads without careful data management.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is SigNoz free to use?
Yes. SigNoz is open-source and free to self-host — the community edition is available on GitHub. A managed SigNoz Cloud offering is also available with usage-based pricing for teams that prefer a hosted solution.
How does SigNoz compare to Datadog?
SigNoz offers comparable observability capabilities — APM, logs, traces, metrics, and alerts — without proprietary agents or vendor lock-in. Because it uses OpenTelemetry for instrumentation and ClickHouse for storage, self-hosted deployments typically cost far less than Datadog at scale.
Can I monitor LLM and AI applications with SigNoz?
Yes. SigNoz includes a dedicated LLM/AI Observability module that tracks LLM API calls, measures latency and performance, and monitors token usage and costs across your AI applications.
What languages and frameworks does SigNoz support?
SigNoz supports any language or framework with OpenTelemetry SDK support, including Python, Go, Java, Node.js, Ruby, .NET, PHP, and more. It also supports data ingestion from 50+ sources.
Can I run SigNoz on my own infrastructure?
Yes. SigNoz supports fully self-hosted deployments on your own servers or Kubernetes clusters, giving you complete control over data residency and costs. Alternatively, SigNoz Cloud provides a fully managed experience.
