Sematext Tracing
Sematext Tracing is an OpenTelemetry-based distributed tracing service for monitoring and troubleshooting microservices and distributed systems.
What Sematext Tracing is
Sematext Tracing is an OpenTelemetry-based distributed tracing service for monitoring and troubleshooting microservices and distributed systems. It accepts OTLP traces over HTTP or gRPC and works with OpenTelemetry Collectors, Jaeger, Zipkin, and compatible instrumentation. Users can search by service, operation, latency, errors, or custom attributes, then inspect waterfall and span details. Error rates, error types, and stack traces appear within complete request traces. A Service Map shows application architecture, dependencies, and communication patterns. Performance views include latency breakdowns, P50/P95/P99 percentiles, RED metrics, and database query insights. Head-based sampling can prioritize errors and high-latency requests. Alerts can use latency thresholds, error rates, or custom span attributes. Deployment is listed for Kubernetes, Docker, containers, or bare metal. The service offers a 14-day trial without a credit card; paid pricing starts at $17.10/mo (annual), with span-based tiers and one- or seven-day retention options.
Good
- OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, Zipkin, and OTLP support
- Waterfall and span-level trace inspection
- Service Map for dependencies and communication
- P50/P95/P99 and RED metrics
- 14-day trial without credit card
Watch out
- No free plan
- Tail-based sampling is not supported
- Basic retention is one day
- Pricing depends on daily span volume and retention
Who it suits
Sematext Tracing suits teams instrumenting microservices or distributed systems with OpenTelemetry. It fits users who need trace search, service maps, performance percentiles, and configurable alerts.
Verdict
Sematext Tracing offers broad OpenTelemetry ingestion, trace investigation, service mapping, and alerting. Check retention periods, span-volume tiers, and the lack of tail-based sampling against your observability requirements.
Plans and prices
From Sematext Tracing's own pricing page, checked 7 Oct 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | — | 2M spans/day included · 1 day retention · per month; billed monthly based on actual usage |
| Pro | — | 20M spans/day tier · 7 days retention · per month; billed monthly based on actual usage |
| Standard | — | 5M spans/day tier · 7 days retention · per month; billed monthly based on actual usage |
The facts
Each one read from Sematext Tracing's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- Alerting
- Users can set alerts on latency thresholds, error rates, or custom span attributes and integrate them with incident management workflows.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Deployment
- The product page says it can be deployed on Kubernetes, Docker, containers, or bare metal.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Languages and frameworks
- The product lists support for Java, Python, Node.js, Go, .NET, Ruby, JavaScript/TypeScript, iOS/Swift, Android, Spring, Django, Express, Rails, React, Vue, and Svelte.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Performance insights
- Tracing provides latency breakdowns, P50/P95/P99 percentiles, RED metrics, and database query performance insights.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Product
- Sematext Tracing is an OpenTelemetry-based distributed tracing solution for monitoring and troubleshooting microservices and distributed systems.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Root cause analysis
- The product displays error rates, error types, and stack traces in the context of a full request trace.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Sampling
- Users can configure head-based sampling to always sample errors and high-latency requests while sampling normal traffic at lower rates.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Service map
- The Service Map visualizes application architecture, dependencies, and communication patterns from OpenTelemetry trace data.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Support
- The product page links to production support, and the company page says Sematext provides production support for Elasticsearch, the ELK/Elastic Stack, and Apache Solr.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Trace collection
- It accepts traces using OTLP over HTTP or gRPC and works with OpenTelemetry Collectors, Jaeger, Zipkin, and OTLP-compatible instrumentation.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Trace search
- Users can search and filter traces by service, operation, latency, errors, and custom attributes, and inspect waterfall and span-level details.checked 7 Oct 2026
The company
- Company history
- Sematext’s company history says it launched as Sematext International in Spring 2010.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Headquarters
- The product page lists Brooklyn, NY, USA as the company location.checked 7 Oct 2026
Money
- Plans and limits
- Pricing depends on plan tier, daily span volume, and retention; the pricing page specifies 2M, 5M, and 20M spans/day tiers and 1-day Basic versus 7-day Standard/Pro retention.checked 7 Oct 2026
- Trial
- The Tracing page offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.checked 7 Oct 2026
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