Editorial take
Why it stands out
Grafana Tempo should be framed as backend tracing infrastructure with a transparent managed path, not just as a Grafana ecosystem add-on.
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Tool profile
Open-source, high-scale distributed tracing backend with a public managed path through Grafana Cloud Traces.
Distributed tracing backend
Grafana Tempo is worth adding because distributed tracing is now a real stack category, not a niche extra, and Tempo is one of the most credible open-source backends in that layer. The official Grafana page describes it as an open-source, easy-to-use, high-scale distributed tracing backend. That positioning matters because Tempo is not a frontend observability feature or a developer debugging toy. It is backend infrastructure for teams that want to retain and query traces at scale.
The pricing story should be stated honestly and precisely. Tempo itself is open-source software and can be adopted for free. The managed route is Grafana Cloud Traces. Grafana currently lists a Free tier at $0 with 50 GB ingested per month, a Pro tier with a $19 monthly platform fee plus usage pricing, and Enterprise as custom with a $25,000 annual minimum commit. The Traces pricing section also publicly lists Pro rates at $0.05/GB process, $0.40/GB write, and $0.10/GB retain. That combination makes Tempo one of the cleaner OSS tracing entries to compare because both the project role and the managed economics are visible on official sources.
Quick fit
Editorial take
Grafana Tempo should be framed as backend tracing infrastructure with a transparent managed path, not just as a Grafana ecosystem add-on.
What it does well
Primary use cases
Fit notes
Compare with
Pressure-test this pick against nearby alternatives.
Apache Kafka
Free planEvent streaming and event-driven architectures
Open-source distributed event streaming platform for high-throughput pipelines, pub/sub, and stream-processing ecosystems.
Choose Kafka when replayable event streams and ecosystem breadth matter more than the lightest possible operational footprint.
Pricing snapshot
Grafana Tempo is free open-source software, while managed pricing is sold through Grafana Cloud Traces. Grafana's official pricing page currently shows Free at $0 with 50 GB ingested per month, Pro with a $19/month platform fee plus $0.05/GB process, $0.40/GB write, and $0.10/GB retain, and Enterprise as custom with a $25,000 annual minimum commit.
Arcjet
Free planApplication runtime security
Runtime security toolkit for modern applications and AI systems that helps teams enforce quotas, block bots, prevent prompt abuse, and ship app-level protections in code.
Closer to application-runtime security and abuse-prevention tooling than to classic perimeter appliances.
