You're a busy SRE or DevOps engineer? You're knee-deep in microservices, Kubernetes, and that ever-present dread of the "unknown unknown?" You know observability is crucial, but dealing with complex tools, opaque pricing, and vendor lock-in? That's a nightmare you don't have time for. If you're using or considering ServiceNow Cloud Observability (Lightstep), you've likely seen its strengths, especially its deep distributed tracing. But what if it's not the perfect fit? What if the cost is biting, the integration feels a bit too "ServiceNow-centric," or you need more control over your data?
You're not alone. Many teams are frustrated with the status quo, seeking cloud observability platforms that offer better value, deeper distributed tracing tools, and true vendor neutrality. This is a practitioner's guide to the best ServiceNow Lightstep alternatives out there. We'll cut through the noise, examine the trade-offs, and help you find a tool that genuinely solves your problems without adding new ones.
1. Dash0
Dash0 is an OpenTelemetry-native observability platform built for cloud-native startups and mid-sized companies. It provides full-stack observability—logs, metrics, and traces—with a laser focus on transparent pricing, zero lock-in, and a streamlined SRE workflow. It's designed to give you powerful insights without the operational headaches or bill shock.
What's good
Dash0 is OpenTelemetry-native from the ground up. That means no proprietary agents, no data mapping, and full support for all OpenTelemetry signals and semantic conventions. This translates directly to zero vendor lock-in. You can export your data, dashboards (thanks to Perses integration), and alerts (Prometheus standard) easily. Your telemetry is truly yours.
The pricing model is refreshingly transparent and predictable, based purely on the number of logs, spans, and metric data points ingested, not on GBs or users. This encourages sending rich metadata without fear of ballooning costs. You get real-time cost visibility broken down by service or team, and there are no per-user fees.
Dash0's SIFT framework — Spam removal, Improve telemetry, Filtering & grouping, and Triage — is a game-changer for daily SRE work. It actively prunes noisy data, automatically enhances unstructured logs (with Log AI, assigning severity with 98% accuracy and 0% false positives), provides intuitive filtering, and offers one-click automated root cause analysis to pinpoint issues fast.
Dashboards are built on Perses, an open-source tool, allowing for dashboards-as-code and easy portability. Plus, Dash0 uses PromQL for all signals (logs, metrics, and traces), standardizing your query language and leveraging existing Prometheus knowledge and community resources.
The catch
As a newer entrant, Dash0's breadth of integrations and niche features might not yet match the sheer volume of some older, more established, enterprise-focused APM tools. While it emphasizes community standards, it doesn't have the decades-long community presence of projects like Prometheus or Grafana.
The verdict
Dash0 is the clear choice for cloud-native teams who are serious about OpenTelemetry, sick of vendor lock-in, and demand transparent, predictable pricing. If you value a streamlined workflow, automated data enhancement, and the power of PromQL across all your observability signals, Dash0 is built for you. It’s ideal for startups and mid-sized companies that need powerful, affordable, and future-proof microservices monitoring without the usual observability headaches.
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2. Datadog
Datadog is a market leader, a comprehensive, all-in-one observability platform covering infrastructure, APM, logs, RUM, synthetics, and security. It's known for its extensive feature set and deep integrations.
What's good
Datadog's breadth of features is unmatched. It consolidates an enormous range of monitoring capabilities into a single interface, reducing tool sprawl for large enterprises. Its infrastructure monitoring, APM, and log management are considered best-in-class. Setup for core features can be surprisingly easy, with auto-instrumentation via their proprietary agent. Their Watchdog AI engine helps surface anomalies automatically, and dashboards are highly polished and customizable.
The catch
The most significant pain point is Datadog's prohibitive and complex cost structure. The multi-vector pricing (per-host, per-GB, per-user, custom metrics) is notoriously difficult to predict, leading to frequent "bill shock". Crucially, OpenTelemetry metrics are often treated as expensive "custom metrics," financially penalizing OTel adoption. The UI can be overwhelming due to its sheer feature density, and customer support quality is mixed. Furthermore, its proprietary agent architecture creates significant vendor lock-in.
The verdict
Datadog is a fit for large enterprises with diverse, often legacy, environments who prioritize a single, deeply integrated platform and have a substantial, well-managed budget to absorb its high and unpredictable costs. If you're a cloud-native team focused on OpenTelemetry or a cost-conscious startup, you'll likely find Datadog's pricing and proprietary nature misaligned with your goals. It’s one of the APM tools that makes moving hard.
3. Dynatrace
Dynatrace is another enterprise-grade, all-in-one observability and security platform, distinguished by its heavy emphasis on AI-powered automation, particularly its "Davis" AI engine for automated root cause analysis.
What's good
Dynatrace's AI-powered root cause analysis (Davis AI) is its strongest differentiator. It automatically identifies dependencies, detects anomalies, and provides precise root-cause analysis without extensive manual configuration, significantly reducing Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR). Its "OneAgent" technology offers highly simplified, zero-touch deployment and automatic discovery of application and infrastructure components. It provides deep, full-stack context with proprietary "PurePath" tracing.
The catch
Despite its power, Dynatrace faces criticism for product coherency and UI complexity; users often describe it as a disjointed collection of tools with a steep learning curve. Documentation is also a common pain point. Like Datadog, it's very expensive, making it inaccessible for smaller organizations. User sentiment on support quality is also mixed, with some reporting unhelpful technicians. Its primary ingestion method remains proprietary, leading to potential vendor lock-in, despite OpenTelemetry support.
The verdict
Dynatrace is best for large enterprises with complex, hybrid-cloud environments that are willing to pay a premium for a platform that heavily automates discovery, dependency mapping, and root-cause analysis. It suits organizations that prefer an AI-driven, hands-off approach to observability, even if it feels like a "black box" to some practitioners.
4. New Relic
New Relic is a pioneer in APM that has evolved into a comprehensive full-stack observability platform. It aims to offer a unified solution with simplified pricing and a generous free tier, embracing open standards like OpenTelemetry.
What's good
New Relic stands out with its generous free tier (100 GB of data ingest per month and one full platform user), providing a frictionless entry point for developers and small teams. It has made a strategic effort towards a simplified pricing model based on data ingest and user seats, positioning itself against complex, multi-SKU models. It maintains a core strength in deep, code-level APM insights and offers a powerful NRQL (New Relic Query Language) for sophisticated data exploration. It treats OpenTelemetry as a first-class citizen for data ingestion.
The catch
Despite efforts to simplify, cost at scale remains a major weakness. Per-user charges for full platform access can become prohibitively expensive for large organizations. A widely reported "unethical billing" incident, where New Relic agent-generated logs led to unexpected bill spikes, has impacted community trust. The UI can still be cluttered with a steep learning curve. Users on the free plan have also reported aggressive sales tactics.
The verdict
New Relic is a good fit for development teams and organizations that need deep APM insights and appreciate a generous free tier to get started. It's suitable for those who want a unified platform with more predictable pricing than Datadog, but be aware that costs can still escalate significantly at high data volumes and with many full platform users.
5. Honeycomb
Honeycomb is a SaaS-only observability platform purpose-built for analyzing high-cardinality, high-dimensionality data using "wide events" and traces. It champions an OpenTelemetry-native approach and focuses on empowering developers to debug "unknown unknown" problems in complex distributed systems.
What's good
Honeycomb's superpower is its fast analysis of high-cardinality data. It allows engineers to slice and dice data by any attribute, making it exceptional for debugging complex, novel production issues. The "BubbleUp" feature automatically highlights differentiating attributes in outlier regions, pinpointing potential causes without manual guesswork. It is a strong proponent of OpenTelemetry-native instrumentation, making it a seamless fit for OTel users. Their pricing is simple, transparent, and event-based, with no charges for users, cardinality, or custom metrics, leading to excellent cost predictability.
The catch
Honeycomb is hyper-focused on event and trace-based debugging, meaning it's not a traditional, all-encompassing monitoring tool. Its capabilities in classic infrastructure monitoring and unstructured log management are less mature, and it lacks features like synthetic monitoring entirely. There's a learning curve to shift from metric-centric thinking to its event-based approach.
The verdict
Honeycomb is an excellent choice for developer-centric engineering teams managing complex, distributed microservices architectures who need to rapidly debug novel production issues. If your primary need is deep, investigative tracing with high-cardinality data and you're committed to OpenTelemetry, Honeycomb offers unparalleled value and cost predictability. However, you'll likely need other tools for broader infrastructure monitoring or traditional log management.
6. Splunk Observability Cloud (formerly SignalFx)
Splunk Observability Cloud is a comprehensive SaaS platform that unifies several of Splunk's monitoring products. It aims to provide an OpenTelemetry-native solution for APM, infrastructure, RUM, and synthetics, leveraging Splunk's powerful log management capabilities via a connector.
What's good
Splunk Observability Cloud is built to be OpenTelemetry-native, supporting vendor-neutral instrumentation. A standout feature is Log Observer Connect, which seamlessly links metrics and traces in Observability Cloud with the deep log analytics of the core Splunk platform. This allows users to pivot directly from a trace to relevant logs without duplicate ingestion. It also offers NoSample™ Full-Fidelity Tracing, capturing 100% of trace data. It's a strong choice for existing Splunk users due to tight integration.
The catch
The most common complaint is the high cost. Splunk is notoriously expensive, and the Observability Cloud is no exception. A primary architectural weakness is the separation of the log data store; logs reside in a different backend (Splunk Enterprise/Cloud) from metrics and traces, potentially introducing complexity and latency compared to truly unified platforms. Support and documentation can also be lacking for specific APM issues.
The verdict
Splunk Observability Cloud is ideal for organizations already heavily invested in the Splunk ecosystem for log management and security. It offers a modern, OTel-native APM solution that integrates well with existing Splunk deployments. However, for green-field projects or companies without prior Splunk investment, the high cost and segregated log storage make it a less attractive option.
7. IBM Instana
IBM Instana is an automated APM and observability platform designed for complex, dynamic, and cloud-native environments. Its core strength lies in its fully automated discovery, mapping, and tracing capabilities, aiming to provide immediate answers and context.
What's good
Instana offers fully automated discovery, mapping, and tracing. Its OneAgent automatically collects all telemetry from discovered components, providing a real-time dependency map that is invaluable in highly dynamic microservices environments. It provides method-level visibility into code execution, offering deep insights into application performance. Its 1-second metric granularity allows for very precise monitoring and troubleshooting.
The catch
Instana's pricing is typically per-host (Managed Virtual Server), which can be costly for highly dense containerized environments where many services run on a single host. While its automation is powerful, some users may find the platform's proprietary nature limits flexibility or integration with an open-source observability strategy. Its UI can be perceived as less intuitive than some modern competitors.
The verdict
IBM Instana is best suited for large enterprises with complex, dynamic application portfolios, especially those already within the IBM ecosystem or needing automated APM for traditional and modern applications. It's a strong contender if you prioritize deep, automated insights and are willing to pay for a managed solution that reduces manual configuration.
8. SigNoz
SigNoz positions itself as a direct, open-source, and OpenTelemetry-native alternative to all-in-one observability platforms like Datadog and New Relic. It unifies logs, metrics, and traces in a single application, built on ClickHouse for high performance.
What's good
SigNoz's primary strength is its cost-effective, open-source, OpenTelemetry-native architecture. It offers a unified experience across logs, metrics, and traces, built from the ground up for OpenTelemetry's data model, ensuring full support for semantic conventions. The use of ClickHouse as its datastore provides significant performance advantages for querying large datasets, potentially leading to lower infrastructure costs. Its pricing model is simple, transparent, and usage-based, with no per-user or per-host fees, directly addressing major pain points of incumbent platforms.
The catch
As a relatively new and emerging player, SigNoz has a less mature feature set and fewer pre-built integrations compared to established giants. Its community and support ecosystem are still growing, though the founders are active in public forums. The self-hosted open-source version still requires operational effort to deploy and manage.
The verdict
SigNoz is an excellent choice for startups and cost-conscious engineering teams building on modern, cloud-native stacks who are committed to OpenTelemetry. If you want the convenience of an all-in-one tool but with the benefits of open standards, predictable pricing, and the option to self-host, SigNoz is a compelling alternative to expensive proprietary solutions. It’s an ideal ServiceNow Lightstep alternative for those prioritizing open source.
9. Jaeger (Open Source)
Jaeger is a free and open-source, end-to-end distributed tracing system, a graduated project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It helps monitor and troubleshoot transactions in complex distributed systems, especially microservices architectures.
What's good
Jaeger's primary strength is being a powerful, dedicated, and free open-source solution for distributed tracing. It provides rich visualization and analysis tools out-of-the-box for trace timelines, service dependency graphs, and trace comparisons. It's highly scalable and flexible, supporting multiple storage backends like Cassandra and Elasticsearch. Its tight alignment with OpenTelemetry (with Jaeger v2 embracing OTel natively) ensures future compatibility and interoperability.
The catch
Jaeger's main limitation is its narrow focus exclusively on tracing; it does not natively handle logs or metrics. To achieve full observability, it requires integration with other tools (e.g., Prometheus for metrics, Loki/ELK for logs), building a full stack that demands significant operational expertise and effort. As an open-source project, it lacks dedicated enterprise-level support.
The verdict
Jaeger is ideal for engineering teams building and operating complex microservices-based applications that value open-source software and require a powerful, scalable tracing solution without licensing costs. Be prepared to invest in managing the underlying infrastructure and integrating it with other tools for a complete observability picture. It’s a foundational component for a DIY observability stack.
10. Grafana Labs (Loki, Tempo, Mimir, OSS Grafana)
Grafana's offering is a composable stack of distinct open-source projects—Loki (logs), Grafana (visualization), Tempo (traces), and Mimir (metrics)—often referred to as the "LGTM Stack." It's available as self-hosted open-source components or a fully managed Grafana Cloud service.
What's good
Grafana's greatest strength is its unmatched dashboarding and visualization engine. It's renowned for beautiful, highly customizable dashboards that can pull data from a vast array of sources, making it a central "single pane of glass". Its open and composable nature means no vendor lock-in, with extensive data source plugins and a vibrant open-source community. It's natively designed for OpenTelemetry and Prometheus. Grafana Cloud offers a managed experience with a generous free tier.
The catch
The most significant pain point is the alerting system, which users frequently describe as "needlessly complex," "unintuitive," and "confusing" since its overhaul in Grafana 9. For self-hosters, the operational burden of managing and scaling the individual backend components (Loki, Mimir, Tempo) is substantial. Grafana Cloud's pricing can be unpredictable and lead to "bill shock" for some users, despite being usage-based.
The verdict
Grafana (and its stack) is the ideal choice for engineering teams committed to a Prometheus-based, open-source monitoring philosophy who prioritize flexibility, data ownership, and best-in-class visualization. If you have the in-house expertise to manage a distributed stack or are willing to risk unpredictable cloud costs for the managed version, Grafana offers unparalleled control.
11. Elastic Observability (Elastic APM)
Elastic Observability is a unified solution built on the open-source Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana - ELK Stack). It provides centralized log management, APM, infrastructure monitoring, RUM, and synthetic monitoring, all powered by the Elasticsearch search engine.
What's good
Elastic's greatest strength is its powerful search and analytics engine. Built on Elasticsearch, it offers exceptionally fast and flexible search, indexing, and analytics, making it top-tier for log data. Its open-source foundation provides a low-friction entry point and avoids initial vendor lock-in. It offers a unified experience for logs, metrics, and traces within Kibana, allowing for seamless correlation. It's often perceived as more cost-effective than Splunk, especially for self-hosted deployments. It's also fully OpenTelemetry-native.
The catch
The primary limitation is the complexity of setup and management, particularly for self-hosted deployments. Optimizing a large-scale Elasticsearch cluster requires significant expertise. While Elastic Cloud removes this operational burden, its cloud costs can be confusing and unexpectedly high. KQL (Kibana Query Language) has a learning curve. Its APM solution is generally considered less mature and automated than APM-native competitors.
The verdict
Elastic Observability is ideal for engineering teams with a strong, primary need for powerful log search and analytics, who are comfortable with open-source tooling. It suits organizations that either have the in-house expertise to manage a complex distributed system or are willing to pay for the convenience of the managed cloud service, even with potential cost unpredictability. It’s a solid ServiceNow Lightstep alternative for log-heavy environments.
Final thoughts
The observability landscape is vast, but for cloud-native teams, the path forward is increasingly clear: prioritize OpenTelemetry-native platforms. The days of being held hostage by proprietary agents, opaque pricing, and vendor lock-in are numbered. Dash0, Honeycomb, and SigNoz are leading this charge, offering powerful, future-proof solutions designed for the modern stack.
While ServiceNow Lightstep offers solid distributed tracing, it's worth evaluating if its tightly integrated ecosystem and pricing model align with your long-term goals for flexibility and cost control. Don't let the fear of migration keep you tied to a solution that no longer serves your needs.
The right tool isn't just about features; it's about the total cost of ownership, ease of use for your engineers, and a philosophy that respects your data and your freedom. If you're ready to experience observability without boundaries, it's time to explore the OpenTelemetry-native alternatives.
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