
Google Cloud Trace
The facts below are what the maker publishes about Google Cloud Trace, checked and dated. Our editors have not written about it yet.
Plans and prices
From Google Cloud Trace's own pricing page, checked 9 Oct 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Trace usage-based pricing | $0.20 a month | First 2.5 million spans per billing account/month free · Auto-generated spans from App Engine Standard, Cloud Run functions, and Cloud Run are non-chargeable · Monthly; first 2.5 million spans per billing account are free |
The facts
Each one read from Google Cloud Trace's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- API quota
- The Cloud Trace API has a daily span-ingestion quota of 3,000,000 to 5,000,000,000 spans, based on billing history and quota increase requests; this quota does not apply to Telemetry API ingestion.checked 9 Oct 2026
- Automatic tracing
- App Engine standard, Cloud Run functions, and Cloud Run automatically capture some trace data.checked 9 Oct 2026
- BigQuery
- A linked BigQuery dataset enables joining trace data with other BigQuery datasets and querying it from BigQuery Studio or Data Studio.checked 9 Oct 2026
- Data residency caveat
- Google says not to use the Cloud Trace API to send trace spans when using Assured Workloads for data-residency or IL4 requirements.checked 9 Oct 2026
- Instrumentation
- Google recommends OpenTelemetry, with Go, Java, Node.js, and Python instrumentation samples.checked 9 Oct 2026
- Integrations
- Cloud Logging entries can be associated with traces and spans, and displayed alongside trace waterfall graphs or in Logs Explorer.checked 9 Oct 2026
- Latency analysis
- Trace Explorer displays aggregate latency on a heatmap and lets users filter data and inspect individual traces and spans.checked 9 Oct 2026
- Purpose
- Cloud Trace collects latency data to help troubleshoot performance bottlenecks across services and generative AI applications.checked 9 Oct 2026
- Retention
- Spans stored in the _Trace bucket are retained for 30 days.checked 9 Oct 2026
- Security controls
- Cloud Trace supports VPC Service Controls and uses Identity and Access Management to control access to resources.checked 9 Oct 2026
- SQL analytics
- Observability Analytics provides a SQL interface for querying trace data and joining it with log data.checked 9 Oct 2026
- Supported environments
- Trace runs on Linux in Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Apigee (Public Preview), App Engine, Cloud Run, Cloud Service Mesh, Cloud SQL query insights, and non-Google Cloud environments.checked 9 Oct 2026
The company
- Company history
- Google Inc. was officially born in August 1998, and Google identifies its current headquarters as the Googleplex in Mountain View, California.checked 9 Oct 2026
Alternatives to Google Cloud Trace
- 1
Netdata
Free planOpen sourceAndroidiOSWebAPI8.7From $4.50 a month - 2
Grafana Cloud Application Observability
Free planAndroidiOSWebAPI8.4From $0.03 a month - 3

Uptrace
Free planOpen sourceWebAPILinuxmacOS8.4From $39 a month - 4
Coroot
Free planOpen sourceWebAPILinuxSelf-hosted8.2From $1 a month - 5

Middleware
Free planAndroidiOSWebAPI8.2$0.30 usage-based - 6

Embrace
Free planAndroidiOSWebAPI8.1$0.80 usage-based
