Our take
Pick groundcover if platform teams who will stay on Free at $0 (BYOC, 12-hour retention, Slack community, no card) while they open a first Traces list, then buy Pro at $30 / host / month when they want SSO and standard retention. Pick SigNoz if platform teams who will stay on Community Edition $0 (self-host, no card) while they ship a first OTel pipeline, then buy Cloud Teams at $49/month when they want $49 of
Best for
groundcover EBPF traces you keep in your cloud
SigNoz APM you start at $0 OSS or $49 Cloud
Free plan
groundcover $0 · bYOC. 12-hour data retention. Slack community support. No credit card
SigNoz $0 · self-host. You run the cluster, storage, upgrades, and backups. Community Slack. No Teams chat / email support
Lowest paid
groundcover Pro $30
SigNoz Enterprise $4/mo
Next step up
groundcover On Premise $50
SigNoz Startup program $19/mo
Runs where
groundcover Hosted
SigNoz Local; you host it
Watch out
groundcover Free retention is 12 hours
SigNoz Cloud has a $49 floor
Last checked
groundcover 2026-10-23 · groundcover.com/pricing
SigNoz 2026-10-22 · signoz.io/pricing
platform teams who will stay on Free at $0 (BYOC, 12-hour retention, Slack community, no card) while they open a first Traces list, then buy Pro at $30 / host / month when they want SSO and standard retention.
Read the groundcover pageplatform teams who will stay on Community Edition $0 (self-host, no card) while they ship a first OTel pipeline, then buy Cloud Teams at $49/month when they want $49 of included usage and no cluster to run.
Read the SigNoz page
