Laminar vs OpenLIT
Both are observability & tracing tools. Here is how they actually differ on price, billing model and deployment.
Laminar
An open-source, OpenTelemetry-native tracing and eval platform for AI agents, written in Rust. The only tool here you can self-host in full - but its billing unit, "Signals" measured in tokens spent reading traces, is genuinely hard to forecast.
OpenLIT
Apache-2.0 OpenTelemetry-native platform covering LLM tracing, evals, prompts, guardrails and a Vault - plus the one thing nearly every competitor ignores entirely, GPU monitoring for self-hosted inference.
| Laminar | OpenLIT | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Observability & Tracing | Observability & Tracing |
| Our rating | 4/5 | 4/5 |
| Starting price | $30/mo | $0 (Apache 2.0) |
| Billing meter | span | No usage metering |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free self-hosting | Yes, free | Yes, free |
| Best for | Teams building AI agents - especially browser agents - who want OpenTelemetry-native tracing they can self-host completely and don't mind an unusual billing model | Teams running self-hosted inference on their own GPUs, where correlating GPU health with model performance matters. Also a strong free choice for anyone wanting broad AI engineering tooling in one Apache-2.0 package. |
Our verdict on Laminar
Laminar is the one platform here you can genuinely self-host end to end, and for a browser-agent or long-running-agent stack it's the most purpose-built option, with real credibility from OTel's co-creator as an angel and Browser Use documenting it as their integration. Two honest reservations. It's the youngest and smallest, and its billing - data GB plus Signals measured in tokens spent reading traces - is the hardest to forecast in the category. Self-host is the escape hatch from the billing puzzle, but the exact feature gap versus cloud isn't clearly documented, so verify it before you commit.
Full Laminar review →Our verdict on OpenLIT
OpenLIT is the only tool in this category that takes the GPU layer seriously, and if you run your own inference that alone may decide it. Its OpenTelemetry GPU collector exports utilisation, memory, temperature and power as standard OTel signals, so you can correlate a latency regression with thermal throttling or a KV cache leak in the same dashboard - a class of problem that is completely invisible to Langfuse, LangSmith or Braintrust, because they assume you call an API. Beyond that it is unusually broad for a free tool - Apache 2.0 across the core, covering observability, evals, guardrails, prompt management, a Vault and a Playground. The trade-off is breadth over depth, since each module is lighter than a dedicated competitor, and the community is small at roughly 2,500 stars. Two things we could not resolve - an enterprise eBPF controller is referenced without clear licensing terms, and the project has recently described itself as a Harness Engineering platform without public explanation of what that means.
Full OpenLIT review →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main difference between Laminar and OpenLIT?
Laminar: Teams building AI agents - especially browser agents - who want OpenTelemetry-native tracing they can self-host completely and don't mind an unusual billing model OpenLIT: Teams running self-hosted inference on their own GPUs, where correlating GPU health with model performance matters. Also a strong free choice for anyone wanting broad AI engineering tooling in one Apache-2.0 package. Both sit in Observability & Tracing, so the decision usually comes down to billing model and deployment rather than raw capability.
Which is cheaper, Laminar or OpenLIT?
It depends entirely on your workload shape, because they meter differently - Laminar bills on span and OpenLIT bills on no usage metering. Published starting prices are $30/mo and $0 (Apache 2.0) respectively, but those numbers are not comparable until you apply them to the same traffic. Use our cost calculator to model both against your own request volume and span count.
Can I self-host Laminar or OpenLIT?
Laminar: Yes, free. OpenLIT: Yes, free. Free self-hosting means no licence fee, not no cost - you still own the infrastructure, upgrades and on-call.