OpenObserve is a cloud-native observability platform designed to simplify log, metric, trace, and analytics management. Built as an alternative to Elasticsearch, Splunk, and Datadog, OpenObserve offers a high-performance, cost-effective solution with petabyte-scale capabilities.
Key Features:
Comprehensive Observability: Supports logs, metrics, traces, RUM (Real User Monitoring), error tracking, and session replay.
OpenTelemetry Integration: Fully compatible with OTLP for seamless collection of distributed tracing data.
Advanced Visualization: Features over 18 chart types for dashboards, reports, and alerts to enable deep insights.
Stream Processing Pipelines: Enables enrichment, redaction, normalization, and transformation of data on the fly.
SQL and PromQL Querying: Supports log and trace querying with SQL and metrics analysis with SQL and PromQL.
Versatile Storage Options: Supports local disk, S3, MinIO, GCS, Azure Blob Storage for flexible deployment needs.
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for DevOps engineers, site reliability engineers (SREs), and developers who need a scalable observability solution. OpenObserve reduces storage costs by up to 140x compared to Elasticsearch while offering superior performance and ease of use. Its intuitive UI eliminates the need for complex configurations, making it faster to deploy and simpler to operate than traditional alternatives.
Installable via winget, OpenObserve provides a straightforward path to achieving modern observability at scale without the complexity of legacy systems.
README
Open source Datadog alternative for logs, metrics, traces, and frontend monitoring. Modern observability platform: 10x easier, 140x lower storage cost, high performance, petabyte scale.
OpenObserve (O2) is a cloud-native observability tool built for logs, metrics, traces, analytics, and Real User Monitoring (RUM). It's designed as a cost-effective alternative to Datadog, Splunk, and Elasticsearch for teams that need full observability without the complexity or cost.
Why OpenObserve?
OpenObserve is a single observability tool for all your monitoring needs. Here's why teams choose OpenObserve:
OpenObserve achieves 140x lower storage costs and high performance through its modern architecture:
Parquet columnar storage: Efficient compression and query performance
S3-native design: Leverages inexpensive object storage with intelligent caching
Built in Rust: Memory-safe, high-performance, single binary deployment
Partitioning, indexing and smart caching: Reduces search space by up to 99% for most queries
Native multi-tenancy: Organizations and streams as first-class concepts with complete data isolation
Stateless architecture: Enables rapid scaling and low RPO/RTO for disaster recovery
This architecture delivers 140x cost savings while providing better performance than Elasticsearch.
Scale & Deployment
Thousands of concurrent users can query a single cluster simultaneously
Single binary scales to terabytes - unique in the observability space
High Availability mode scales to petabytes for the most demanding workloads
Multi-region deployments with cluster federation via Super Cluster architecture (Enterprise feature)
Federated search across regions and clusters (Enterprise feature)
Capacity planning tools to size deployments for your workload
High Availability & Disaster Recovery
Deploy in High Availability mode with clustering for mission-critical workloads requiring maximum uptime and performance.
Low RPO/RTO: OpenObserve's stateless architecture with S3-backed storage enables very low Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). Stateless nodes can be rapidly restarted, and data durability is guaranteed by S3's 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability. That's a lot of nines.
For a full list of features, check the documentation.
Logs Management
OpenObserve provides a centralized log management solution with full-text search, SQL queries, and powerful filtering. Built on Parquet columnar storage for 140x lower storage costs than Elasticsearch.
Instantly search through all your logs using quick filters and a powerful query builder. Create dashboards from log data and set up alerts. Read more →
Distributed Tracing
Distributed tracing is essential to troubleshoot issues in microservices applications. Powered by OpenTelemetry, tracing in OpenObserve helps you track user requests across services to identify performance bottlenecks.
See user requests in a detailed breakdown with Flamegraphs and Gantt Charts. Click on any span to see the entire trace and understand where issues occurred. Read more →
Metrics & Dashboards
Ingest metrics from your infrastructure or applications and create customized dashboards. 19+ built-in chart types plus custom charts for 200+ visualization variations.
Query metrics with SQL or PromQL. Add multiple queries and combine them with formulae. Read more →
Frontend Monitoring (RUM)
Real User Monitoring with performance tracking, error logging, and session replay. Understand exactly what your users experience.
Read more →
Alerts
Get notified when anything unusual happens in your application. Set alerts on any telemetry signal (logs, metrics, traces), create thresholds, and configure notification channels.
Advanced features like alert history and anomaly detection help you identify issues before they reach your customers. Read more →
Pipelines
Enrich, redact, reduce, or normalize data on ingest. Stream processing for logs-to-metrics conversion and more. No external tools required.
Read more →
Getting Started
OpenObserve Cloud (Fastest Way)
Get started in minutes without managing infrastructure. Free tier includes up to 200 GB/day ingestion.
Get Started Free →
OpenObserve consolidates logs, metrics, and traces in one platform instead of stitching together multiple tools.
📷 Screenshots
OpenObserve includes a powerful web UI for logs, traces, dashboards, alerts, and more.
Logs Search
Distributed Tracing
Trace details page with full request flow visualization:
Dashboards
Frontend Monitoring
Real user monitoring with session replay:
See more screenshots
Home
Golden Metrics from Traces
More Dashboard Examples
Performance Analytics
Error Tracking
Alerts
Streams
Ingestion
Pipeline
Functions
🔐 Security & Compliance
Security Features
Highly secure architecture with secure container images
Sensitive Data Redaction (SDR): Automatically redact sensitive data during ingestion and query time (Enterprise feature)
Data encryption: At rest and in transit
Single Sign-On (SSO): OIDC, OAuth, SAML, LDAP/AD integration (Enterprise feature)
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Granular permissions management (Enterprise feature) - Learn more →
Compliance Certifications
✅ SOC 2 Type II certified
✅ ISO 27001 certified
✅ GDPR compliant
✅ HIPAA ready (BAA available with Enterprise contracts)
OpenObserve meets the stringent security and compliance requirements of regulated industries including finance, healthcare, and government.
⚖️ License
Open Source Edition: Licensed under AGPL-3.0. We chose AGPL to ensure that improvements to OpenObserve remain open source and benefit the entire community. This license protects the commons while still allowing free commercial use.
Enterprise Edition: Licensed under a commercial Enterprise License Agreement, not AGPL. This provides additional flexibility for enterprise deployments and eliminates any concerns about AGPL requirements.
OpenObserve is built as a true open source project, and we're committed to the community. The open source version is feature-complete and production-ready - it includes logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, alerts, pipelines, and everything you need to run observability at scale. It will always remain actively maintained and free to use without restrictions.
Enterprise Edition
For organizations requiring enterprise-grade features and support, we offer an Enterprise edition with:
Enterprise Features:
Single Sign-On (SSO): OIDC, OAuth, SAML 2.0, LDAP/AD, and integration with major identity providers (Okta, Azure Entra, Google, GitHub, GitLab, Keycloak)
Advanced RBAC: Granular role-based access control with custom roles and permissions - Learn more →
Audit trails: Comprehensive immutable audit logs with configurable retention
Federated search: Query across multiple clusters and regions with Super Cluster
Sensitive Data Redaction (SDR): Automatically redact PII and sensitive data during ingestion and queries
Advanced encryption: AES-256 SIV cipher keys with Google Tink KeySet and Akeyless integration
Query management: Control query resource usage and priorities
Workload management (QoS): Quality of Service controls for multi-tenant environments
Enterprise Support & SLAs:
Dedicated support with contractual SLA guarantees
Priority response times for critical issues
Technical account management
Architecture review and deployment assistance
Migration support from existing tools
Training and onboarding programs
Pricing:
Free tier: Up to 200 GB/day of ingestion (roughly 6 TB/month), including full commercial use
Registration required at 100 GB/day
Volume discounts and multi-year contracts available
For enterprise inquiries and custom deployments, contact our sales team.
🤝 Contributing
We welcome contributions from the community! Whether you're fixing bugs, adding features, improving documentation, or sharing feedback, your help makes OpenObserve better for everyone.
The best way to get help, share ideas, and connect with other OpenObserve users is through our community channels. We're a friendly group of developers, operators, and observability enthusiasts.
📖 Documentation - Guides, tutorials, and API references
❓ FAQ
How does OpenObserve achieve 140x lower storage costs?
Through a combination of Parquet columnar storage format (efficient compression), S3-native architecture (leveraging inexpensive object storage). See the detailed comparison chart in the "Why OpenObserve?" section above.
What are the limitations?
All data in OpenObserve is immutable - once ingested, it cannot be modified or deleted (only entire retention periods can be dropped). This is by design and is actually a feature for logs and compliance requirements, ensuring data integrity and audit trails.
Is this production-ready?
Yes. OpenObserve is running in production with thousands of deployments worldwide, including environments processing in excess of 2 PB/day. See our customer stories for real-world examples.
How does query performance compare to Elasticsearch?
OpenObserve delivers better performance than Elasticsearch for most workloads. Users report faster search performance and significantly faster analytics queries, all while using 1/4th the hardware resources. The columnar storage format (Parquet) is particularly effective for complex aggregations and analytics workloads.
Is there a steep learning curve?
No. OpenObserve is designed to be intuitive from day one:
Familiar query languages: Use SQL for logs and traces, PromQL for metrics - no proprietary query language to learn
Easy-to-use GUI: Intuitive interface with drag-and-drop dashboard builder
Helpful community: Active Slack community and comprehensive documentation to help you get started quickly
No complex tuning: Unlike Elasticsearch, you don't need to understand shards, replicas, heap sizes, or other complex configurations. Just install and go.
Most users are productive within hours, not weeks. Some even claim minutes, but we'll let you be the judge.
