View all APM / Observability Alternatives
Best Free Alternatives to AWS AppSignals (CloudWatch)
Stop paying High (CloudWatch Fees). Discover professional-grade tools that won't break your budget.
Category: APM / ObservabilityVerified for 2025
Top Recommended Replacements
SigNoz
FREEBest Unified Alternative
Why we like it
The top open-source alternative to DataDog/AppSignals; natively accepts OpenTelemetry data; visualizes Traces, Metrics, and Logs in one UI; uses ClickHouse for storage (10x cheaper than CloudWatch).
Keep in mind
Requires self-hosting (EKS/EC2) or paying for their cloud tier.
Jaeger
FREEBest for Tracing
Why we like it
The industry standard for distributed tracing; extremely lightweight and easy to deploy via Docker; perfect if you just want to see 'Why is this request slow?' without full metrics.
Keep in mind
It is *only* for tracing (no logs or infrastructure metrics); UI is utilitarian.
Grafana Tempo
FREEBest for Grafana Users
Why we like it
A high-volume tracing backend designed to work with Grafana and Prometheus; uses object storage (S3) effectively, making it dirt cheap to store huge amounts of trace data.
Keep in mind
Requires a running Grafana instance to visualize the data.
Pixie
FREEBest for Kubernetes
Why we like it
Uses eBPF to automatically capture all network traffic and metrics in your cluster *without* needing to add code to your apps (like AppSignals but open source); instant visibility.
Keep in mind
Data retention is short-term (stored in-memory on the cluster).
Elastic APM
FREEBest for Search
Why we like it
If you already use the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) for logs, enabling APM is free/easy; excellent searching capabilities.
Keep in mind
Running a large Elasticsearch cluster can be heavy on RAM/CPU.
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