groundcover

What it is for

Groundcover is a BYOC traces-and-logs desk: you open Traces, and Free is $0 forever (12-hour retention, no card). Use it when the job is eBPF traces you keep in your cloud, not when you need a $20 chat seat.

What makes it unique: the cover is the official groundcover Traces list (demo workspace, 189k results, Requests / Errors / Latencies charts, opentelemetry-demo-frontend 200 OK rows, eBPF scan-portal 202s) from the docs still — not a pricing card. The rows themselves are ops of Traces. Groundcover bills per host, not a chat seat.

Key features

• Traces — a span list with RED charts you filter by status / role / source (cover still; docs). One span. Cover 189k results and waterfall/service-map tabs are ops of this. APM measurements sit here.
• Logs — a log stream you query in Explore (docs). A line, not a span. Log patterns and pipelines are this desk.
• Metrics — host / app time series (docs). A gauge, not a log line. Infrastructure CPU samples sit here.
• Workloads — a Kubernetes workload list on the cover nav (docs). A workload, not a span. Cluster / environment pickers on the cover sit here.
• Monitors — a saved query that pages you (cover Create Monitor). An alert, not a one-off Traces filter. Issues is this surface.

eBPF collection is how spans arrive, not a sixth desk. Explore and Data Explorer are ops of Traces / Logs / Metrics. Slack agent helpers are generate-on-Traces. The in-cluster sensor is install. Hosts are the Cloud meter.

Who it's for

Best fit: 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.

Pricing

Verified 2026-10-23 (Asia/Shanghai) from groundcover.com/pricing. Tiles print Free $0 / Pro $30 per host / month / Enterprise $35 per host / month / On Premise $50 per host / month. Free: no card, free forever.

• Free — $0. BYOC. 12-hour data retention. Slack community support. No credit card.
• Pro — $30 / host / month. BYOC. All integrations. SSO. Standard retention. Standard support.
• Enterprise — $35 / host / month. RBAC. Unlimited retention. Premium support.
• On Premise — $50 / host / month. Self-hosted data plane + UI. Isolated authentication. Contact us to start.

Confirm checkout; taxes follow your location. Your cloud compute is a separate bill.

Limitations / costs

• Free retention is 12 hours. A week of traces wants Pro’s standard retention at $30 / host / month.
• Pro is per host, not per GB. A 40-node cluster is $1,200 / month before your cloud bill.
• A BYOC eBPF desk, not a hosted event lake. For Axiom’s Personal $0 APL see Axiom. For Dash0’s span/log meters see Dash0.

Alternatives

• Dash0 — hosted OTel APM when you want printed span/log dollars, not groundcover’s $0 / $30-per-host BYOC.
• Honeycomb — wide-event traces when you want Honeycomb’s query desk, not an eBPF sensor in your cluster.
• SigNoz — OpenTelemetry APM you can self-host at $0 when you do not want groundcover Cloud.

Official tutorial

Official groundcover channel video: Complete Overview of groundcover (oEmbed author: groundcover). First-party product overview; the docs Traces still is the cover.

Written path: groundcover.com/pricing plus the Traces docs.

Website

https://www.groundcover.com

Repository

https://github.com/groundcover-com

Source

Catalog row curated for AI Tools Nav. Cover is the official groundcover Traces list from the docs still. Dollars checked on groundcover.com/pricing (Free $0 / 12-hour; Pro $30/host/mo; Enterprise $35; On Prem $50). Tutorial oEmbed author: groundcover.

Last verified

2026-10-23 (Asia/Shanghai) editorial check.