Traceway
Ranked 14 of 16 observability platforms by recommenders
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.
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.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 60%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Easy to self-host
“simple to host and reason about”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s” “it's super easy to self host”
Comment from 15 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s” Preconfigured SLOs and exception tracking
“Traceway is aimed at providing teams with no dedicated SREs with preconfigured SLOs, a preconfigured dashboard and a really powerful exception tracking.”
Comment from 15 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s” “a dev focused tool to help smallish teams find and fix issues before customers even have time to complain”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s” Fully OpenTelemetry compliant
“Highest cohort penetration. OpenTelemetry for agents.”
Comment from 31 Jul 2026 in “MIT/FOSS repos our stargazers are starting to follow” “Traceway is fully OTel compliant.”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s” Reported stable in production
“I am running the stack in production right now”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s” “handled it without a hiccup”
Comment from 16 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Unclear what differs from existing tools
“Is there anything actually different about your product other than less stability than the battle-tested stack?”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s” “This to me seems like yet another way to re-invent the wheel.”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s” Doubts about longevity and stability
“Is there anything actually different about your product other than less stability than the battle-tested stack?”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s” “i'd probably be a little concerned about the project's longevity”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s”
Other observability platforms people recommend
The four most recommended other observability platforms, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grafana | 71 | 41 | 63% | 11 | — | — |
| Prometheus | 48 | 24 | 67% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Datadog | 40 | 39 | 51% | 11 | — | — |
| Sentry | 31 | 30 | 51% | 11 | — | — |
| TracewayThis page | 6 | 4 | 60% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
15 of the 17 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Highest cohort penetration. OpenTelemetry for agents.”
“I see no uptime tool in tracewayapp -> -1”
“handled it without a hiccup”
“it's super easy to self host”
“Traceway is aimed at providing teams with no dedicated SREs with preconfigured SLOs, a preconfigured dashboard and a really powerful exception tracking.”
“i'd probably be a little concerned about the project's longevity”
“Traceway is a 60mb binary in Go, it works with Clickhouse or Sqlite and the data is stored on S3 when not used.”
“a dev focused tool to help smallish teams find and fix issues before customers even have time to complain”
“simple to host and reason about”
“All MIT. None behind a paywall.”
“Traceway is fully OTel compliant.”
“Is there anything actually different about your product other than less stability than the battle-tested stack?”
“I am running the stack in production right now”
“how can you claim in the readme "no per-language vendor SDK" and then link to a list of per-language client SDKs?”
“This to me seems like yet another way to re-invent the wheel.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.