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 VictoriaMetrics if observability teams who will burn the 30-day $200 Cloud credit on a first Logs Query Overview, then stay on the $200 / month initial Metrics or Logs tier — or
Best for
groundcover EBPF traces you keep in your cloud
VictoriaMetrics Logs and series you size by capacity tier
Free plan
groundcover $0 · bYOC. 12-hour data retention. Slack community support. No credit card
VictoriaMetrics $0 · enterprise self-host is talk-to-sales
Lowest paid
groundcover Pro $30
VictoriaMetrics Meters $0.09
Next step up
groundcover On Premise $50
VictoriaMetrics Cloud (Metrics) from $200
Runs where
groundcover Hosted
VictoriaMetrics Hosted
Watch out
groundcover Free retention is 12 hours
VictoriaMetrics The $200 credit is 30 days, not forever Free
Last checked
groundcover 2026-10-23 · groundcover.com/pricing
VictoriaMetrics 2026-10-23 · victoriametrics.com/products/cloud
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 pageobservability teams who will burn the 30-day $200 Cloud credit on a first Logs Query Overview, then stay on the $200 / month initial Metrics or Logs tier — or self-host the Apache-2.0 core at $0 when they do not want managed capacity.
Read the VictoriaMetrics page
