Lunary vs Traceloop
Both are observability & tracing tools. Here is how they actually differ on price, billing model and deployment.
Lunary
A lightweight Apache-2.0 observability platform aimed at RAG pipelines and chatbots. The fastest path from nothing to basic tracing, with a free tier metered daily rather than monthly - which catches people out.
Traceloop
The company behind OpenLLMetry, acquired by ServiceNow in March 2026 to power AI Control Tower. The Apache-2.0 SDK is safe and still actively developed - the managed platform's standalone future is the open question.
| Lunary | Traceloop | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Observability & Tracing | Observability & Tracing |
| Our rating | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| Starting price | Around $20-30/mo | Custom |
| Billing meter | event | span |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free self-hosting | Yes, free | Yes, free |
| Best for | Small teams shipping RAG pipelines or chatbots who want basic tracing working this afternoon, and who will either stay small or self-host before volume becomes expensive. | Teams that want vendor-neutral OpenTelemetry LLM instrumentation via OpenLLMetry, which is genuinely safe to adopt. The managed platform suits existing ServiceNow customers, or teams needing air-gapped deployment who can get contractual clarity on the roadmap. |
Our verdict on Lunary
Lunary is a good starter tool that knows what it is. It is optimised for RAG pipelines and chatbots rather than trying to be a complete AI engineering platform, it is Apache 2.0 and self-hostable, and it is among the fastest things in the category to get running. Radar - which buckets responses against criteria you define - is a genuinely useful idea for spotting patterns that individual traces hide. Two caveats matter. The free tier is 1,000 events per day rather than per month, which is a meaningfully tighter constraint than the headline suggests and will not survive a real chatbot for long. And published pricing is inconsistent across sources in a way we could not resolve, with figures ranging from around $20 to $200 a month depending on where you look. Against Langfuse it is lighter on nearly every axis, and Langfuse is the better default for most teams. Lunary earns its place when speed to first trace matters more than depth.
Full Lunary review →Our verdict on Traceloop
Split this decision in two, because the SDK and the platform now carry very different risk. OpenLLMetry - the Apache-2.0 OpenTelemetry extension - is one of the safest things you can adopt in this category. It is permissively licensed, the team publicly committed it stays that way, it exports to 25+ backends including Datadog, and it remained actively maintained through the acquisition. You can instrument with it and never create a Traceloop account. The managed platform is a different question. ServiceNow acquired Traceloop in March 2026, reportedly for $60 to $80 million, and shipped the integration into AI Control Tower at Knowledge 2026 in May. The stated strategic purpose is enterprise AI governance inside ServiceNow, not an independent observability product. The site still promotes signups and nothing suggests a Helicone-style wind-down, but a standalone product whose parent bought it for a different purpose is a roadmap you do not control. Use the SDK freely. Get contractual clarity before you build on the platform.
Full Traceloop review →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the main difference between Lunary and Traceloop?
Lunary: Small teams shipping RAG pipelines or chatbots who want basic tracing working this afternoon, and who will either stay small or self-host before volume becomes expensive. Traceloop: Teams that want vendor-neutral OpenTelemetry LLM instrumentation via OpenLLMetry, which is genuinely safe to adopt. The managed platform suits existing ServiceNow customers, or teams needing air-gapped deployment who can get contractual clarity on the roadmap. Both sit in Observability & Tracing, so the decision usually comes down to billing model and deployment rather than raw capability.
Which is cheaper, Lunary or Traceloop?
It depends entirely on your workload shape, because they meter differently - Lunary bills on event and Traceloop bills on span. Published starting prices are Around $20-30/mo and Custom 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 Lunary or Traceloop?
Lunary: Yes, free. Traceloop: Yes, free. Free self-hosting means no licence fee, not no cost - you still own the infrastructure, upgrades and on-call.