# Traceway

6 Hacker News commenters recommended Traceway and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free, MIT-licensed observability stack that developers say is easy to self-host, with preconfigured SLOs, exception tracking and OpenTelemetry support. Critics question its novelty and longevity.

## Why people recommend it

- Easy to self-host (2 comments): "simple to host and reason about" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130592)) "it's super easy to self host" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143278))
- Preconfigured SLOs and exception tracking (2 comments): "Traceway is aimed at providing teams with no dedicated SREs with preconfigured SLOs, a preconfigured dashboard and a really powerful exception tracking." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143241)) "a dev focused tool to help smallish teams find and fix issues before customers even have time to complain" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130681))
- Fully OpenTelemetry compliant (2 comments): "Highest cohort penetration. OpenTelemetry for agents." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49120336)) "Traceway is fully OTel compliant." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48128244))
- Reported stable in production (2 comments): "I am running the stack in production right now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48121324)) "handled it without a hiccup" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48156335))

## What people warn about

- Unclear what differs from existing tools (2 comments): "Is there anything actually different about your product other than less stability than the battle-tested stack?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125585)) "This to me seems like yet another way to re-invent the wheel." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48120125))
- Doubts about longevity and stability (2 comments): "Is there anything actually different about your product other than less stability than the battle-tested stack?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125585)) "i'd probably be a little concerned about the project's longevity" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48131490))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Grafana](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grafana.md): 71 recommend
- [Prometheus](https://hackerapproved.com/p/prometheus.md): 48 recommend
- [Datadog](https://hackerapproved.com/p/datadog.md): 40 recommend
- [Sentry](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sentry.md): 31 recommend
- [SigNoz](https://hackerapproved.com/p/signoz.md): 19 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Traceway", https://hackerapproved.com/p/traceway/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).