observability search engine / log & trace search backend
Cloud-native distributed search engine for observability logs and traces on object storage, built on Tantivy in Rust.
Solves the same problem with a different architecture or at a different layer. Expect to rewrite the integration.
Choose when you need SQL/TSDB-style queries over metrics, logs, and traces in one columnar database.
The open-source observability database. One columnar engine for metrics, logs, and traces, on object storage.
Choose when storage efficiency and searching compressed logs matter more than cloud-native indexing.
Compressed Log Processor (CLP) is a free log management tool capable of compressing logs and searching the compressed logs without decompression.
Choose for a mature Java distributed search engine with broad ecosystem, accepting heavier operations.
🔎 Open source distributed and RESTful search engine.
An earlier or more limited way to do the job. Still the right call when you need something small, proven, or CPU-only.
Legacy large-scale log search engine; only for historical Go deployments, unmaintained for 9+ years.
A search engine which can hold 100 trillion lines of log data.
Choose if you only need distributed tracing; it does not cover log search.
CNCF Jaeger, a Distributed Tracing Platform
Choose for mature trace-only tracing; it does not cover log search.
Zipkin is a distributed tracing system
Choose if you only need a trace backend on object storage, not log search.
Grafana Tempo is a high volume, minimal dependency distributed tracing backend.
Does the same job, but ships as an app. Useful to a person, not swappable into a codebase.
Choose when you want a full OpenTelemetry-native APM/observability UI instead of a search backend.
SigNoz is an open-source, OpenTelemetry-native observability platform for your team and their AI agents. Get logs, metrics, and traces in one tool with features like APM, distributed tracing, log management, infra monitoring, etc. Combined with SigNoz MCP and a native AI teammate (in SigNoz Cloud) it helps you build more resilient apps.
Choose for a Splunk-style log management platform with UI, accepting archived maintenance.
100x Efficient Log Management than Splunk :rocket: Reduce your observability cost by 90%
Choose for a full Datadog/Splunk-style observability platform with UI and pipelines.
Open source observability platform for logs, metrics, traces, frontend monitoring, pipelines and LLM observability. A sophisticated, simple and highly performant alternative to Datadog, Splunk, and Elasticsearch with 140x lower storage costs and single binary deployment.
Choose for an out-of-the-box APM UI for traces, metrics, and logs.
Open source APM: OpenTelemetry traces, metrics, and logs
Choose for an LLM-driven observability explorer on S3 instead of a raw search engine.
Monoscope lets you ingest and explore your logs, traces and metrics. We store these in S3 compatible buckets. Query in natural language via LLMs.
Choose for a unified observability UI with session replay instead of a search backend.
Resolve production issues, fast. An open source observability platform unifying session replays, logs, metrics, traces and errors powered by ClickHouse and OpenTelemetry.
These projects were analysed and named quickwit among their alternatives. The relationship is not symmetric — how quickwit rates them is a separate judgement, made when quickwit is analysed in its own right.
calls quickwit “search-engine database on S3 for logs/traces; choose it when you need full-text search and don't require metrics/PromQL.”
The open-source observability database. One columnar engine for metrics, logs, and traces, on object storage.