Side by side
Google Cloud Trace vs Hubble
Both stand on distributed tracing tools. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Free plan APILinuxWeb
Cloud Trace offers latency visualization, SQL querying and connections to logs and BigQuery, with a free monthly span allowance. Review the retention, ingestion quota and data-residency caveat against your requirements before sending trace data.
Visit Google Cloud Trace Free plan APILinuxMac+3
Hubble provides flow visibility and service maps for Cilium-managed workloads, with a CLI and multi-cluster Relay options. It is free, but requires Cilium and does not observe pods outside its management.
Visit HubbleThe facts
| Google Cloud Trace | Hubble | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Not published | Not published |
| Runs on | API, Linux, Web | API, Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Web, Windows |
| Lowest paid plan | See the plans | Free or on request |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | cloud.google.com | cilium.io |
| On distributed tracing tools | #5 of 32 | #9 of 32 |
Google Cloud Trace: what it does well
- Heatmap views aggregate latency across traces.
- SQL analytics can join trace and log data.
- Supports OpenTelemetry instrumentation samples for four languages.
- Trace data can be joined with BigQuery datasets.
- First 2.5 million spans per account each month are free.
What to know first
- Spans in the _Trace bucket are retained for 30 days.
- Assured Workloads residency or IL4 users should not send spans through the Cloud Trace API.
- Daily API ingestion quota varies from 3 million to 5 billion spans.
- Apigee support is Public Preview.
Hubble: what it does well
- Displays service dependencies and recent flow events.
- Flow details include identity and label metadata.
- Relay can span clusters in a ClusterMesh setup.
- TCP connections to Relay use mutual TLS by default.
- Free plan costs nothing.
What to know first
- Requires Cilium in a Kubernetes cluster.
- Observes only pods managed by Cilium.
- Layer 7 flow data is not redacted by default.
Alternatives to Google Cloud Trace Alternatives to Hubble The whole list