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Sematext Tracing
What Sematext Tracing is
Sematext Tracing is a cloud service for monitoring and troubleshooting microservices and distributed systems with OpenTelemetry-based distributed tracing. It accepts OTLP over HTTP or gRPC and works with OpenTelemetry Collectors, Jaeger, Zipkin, and compatible instrumentation. Trace search can filter by service, operation, latency, errors, and custom attributes, with waterfall and span-level views. Error rates, error types, and stack traces are shown within full request traces. A Service Map displays application architecture, dependencies, and communication patterns. Performance views include latency breakdowns, P50, P95, and P99 percentiles, RED metrics, and database query insights. Head-based sampling can prioritize errors and high-latency requests. Alerts can use latency, error rates, or span attributes. Plans are billed monthly by span usage, with listed 2M, 5M, and 20M spans-per-day tiers. Pricing starts at $17.10/mo when billed annually, with a 14-day trial and no free plan.
Who it suits
It suits teams instrumenting microservices across the listed languages and frameworks. It is useful when OpenTelemetry collection, trace search, service mapping, and span-based pricing fit the deployment.
What it does well
- OpenTelemetry support
- Service Map for dependencies
- Searches traces by multiple attributes
- Includes latency percentiles and RED metrics
- 14-day trial without credit card
What to know first
- No free plan
- One-day trace retention listed
- Tail-based sampling is unavailable
- Pricing depends on span volume
Plans
| Plan | Billed and limits | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Pro | per month; billed monthly based on actual usage · 20M spans/day tier · 7 days retention | On request |
| Basic | per month; billed monthly based on actual usage · 2M spans/day included · 1 day retention | On request |
| Standard | per month; billed monthly based on actual usage · 5M spans/day tier · 7 days retention | On request |
As sematext.com lists them, read 7 Oct 2026. The maker's own page has the final word.
Verdict
Sematext Tracing combines OpenTelemetry ingestion, detailed trace investigation, service mapping, and alerting. Teams should consider the one-day retention listing, unavailable tail-based sampling, and usage-based span pricing.
Facts from Sematext Tracing's own pages
- Alerting
- Users can set alerts on latency thresholds, error rates, or custom span attributes and integrate them with incident management workflows. · sematext.com, 7 Oct 2026
- Company history
- Sematext’s company history says it launched as Sematext International in Spring 2010. · sematext.com, 7 Oct 2026
- Deployment
- The product page says it can be deployed on Kubernetes, Docker, containers, or bare metal. · sematext.com, 7 Oct 2026
- Headquarters
- The product page lists Brooklyn, NY, USA as the company location. · sematext.com, 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. · sematext.com, 7 Oct 2026
- Performance insights
- Tracing provides latency breakdowns, P50/P95/P99 percentiles, RED metrics, and database query performance insights. · sematext.com, 7 Oct 2026
- 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. · sematext.com, 7 Oct 2026
- Product
- Sematext Tracing is an OpenTelemetry-based distributed tracing solution for monitoring and troubleshooting microservices and distributed systems. · sematext.com, 7 Oct 2026
- Root cause analysis
- The product displays error rates, error types, and stack traces in the context of a full request trace. · sematext.com, 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. · sematext.com, 7 Oct 2026
- Service map
- The Service Map visualizes application architecture, dependencies, and communication patterns from OpenTelemetry trace data. · sematext.com, 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. · sematext.com, 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. · sematext.com, 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. · sematext.com, 7 Oct 2026
- Trial
- The Tracing page offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. · sematext.com, 7 Oct 2026
Where Sematext Tracing stands on Freedom251
- Distributed Tracing Tools#25 of 32