No. 12 of 29 ·Distributed Tracing Tools

Grafana Cloud Traces

Web · API

Freedom report

Two barsScore 6.4

Free tierA free tier is on its own pricing page
Open codeNo open-source code on record
Runs widely1 of 6 device platforms
DocumentedPlans, terms and facts published

Grafana Cloud Traces is ranked #12 of 29 in distributed tracing tools on Freedom251. It runs on API, Web. There is a free plan.

Grafana Cloud Traces plans and pricing

All plans

Free Free Always free 50 GB ingested per month · 14 day retention · Community support grafana.com · 29 Sept 2026

Pro Not published Platform fee of $19 per month includes 50 GB ingested per month; then pay as you go 30 days retention · 8×5 email support · automatic volume discounts grafana.com · 29 Sept 2026

Enterprise Not published Minimum commit of $25,000 per year Custom retention · Premium support · Public Cloud, Federal Cloud, or Bring Your Own Cloud deployment flexibility grafana.com · 29 Sept 2026

Compared on distributed tracing tools

Free plan: Yes
Paid from: $19/mo
OpenTelemetry support: Yes
Service map: Yes
Tail-based sampling: Yes
Trace retention: 30 days
Deployment model: cloud
Pricing basis: usage

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The record

Purpose: Grafana Cloud Traces is a fully managed distributed tracing backend for searching traces, generating metrics from spans, and linking tracing data with logs and metrics.
Powered by Tempo: The service is powered by Grafana Tempo and provides trace storage and a query engine.
Storage: It uses object storage and a columnar trace storage format based on Apache Parquet.
Protocols: The service supports open source tracing protocols including OpenTelemetry, Zipkin, and Jaeger.
TraceQL: TraceQL lets users select spans and jump to spans that match specified conditions.
Automatic metrics: Grafana Cloud Traces can automatically derive request rate, error rate, and duration metrics for services.
Data pipelines: Grafana says users can send spans from applications through Grafana Alloy or the OpenTelemetry Collector.
Related signals: Grafana describes correlating logs with traces and pivoting among metrics, logs, and traces in its integrated stack.
Free retention: The minimum retention period for free accounts is 14 days.
Paid retention: The minimum retention period for paid accounts is 30 days; additional retention is charged per gigabyte for each additional 30-day increment.
Trace size limit: The usage limits page gives a default maximum trace size of 3,000,000 bytes and says oversized traces can be discarded.
Security and compliance: Grafana Labs states that it is certified to ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 and maintains PCI compliance for its corporate environment.
Support: The Free tier includes community support, Pro includes 8×5 email support, and Enterprise offers premium support.
Intended users: Grafana describes Cloud Traces as helping teams understand request flows and troubleshoot performance issues at scale.
Price from: Free

Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best Distributed Tracing Tools in 2026#12 of 29

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Sources

grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/send· checked 29 Sept 2026
grafana.com/products/cloud/traces/· checked 29 Sept 2026
grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/pricing-and· checked 29 Sept 2026
grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/pricing-and· checked 29 Sept 2026
grafana.com/legal/security-compliance/· checked 29 Sept 2026
grafana.com/pricing/· checked 29 Sept 2026