Grafana Beyla vs Pinpoint APM
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Grafana Beyla | Pinpoint APM |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 86 · Excellent | 93 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Java |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 2,048 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,135 | ★ 13,872 |
| First released | 2023 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Datadog APM, New Relic | New Relic, Dynatrace |
What are Grafana Beyla and Pinpoint APM?
Grafana Beyla
Beyla is an eBPF-based tool that automatically instruments applications to produce metrics and traces without any code changes. It exports data in Prometheus and OpenTelemetry formats for existing observability stacks.
- eBPF auto-instrumentation
- No code changes needed
- Prometheus metrics export
- OpenTelemetry traces
Pinpoint APM
Pinpoint is an open-source application performance management tool for large-scale distributed systems written in Java, PHP, and Python. It traces transactions across components to diagnose performance issues.
- Distributed transaction tracing
- Application topology maps
- Real-time monitoring
- Agent-based instrumentation
Grafana Beyla vs Pinpoint APM: key differences
Grafana Beyla is written in Go, while Pinpoint APM is built with Java. Grafana Beyla is the lighter option, starting around 128 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for Pinpoint APM. Pinpoint APM is the more established project (first released 2015), while Grafana Beyla arrived in 2023. Pinpoint APM has the considerably larger community, at 13,872 GitHub stars versus 2,135.
Why pick each one
Choose Grafana Beyla if…
- Instrument without code
- Low overhead
Watch out for
- Requires modern kernel
- Limited language depth
Choose Pinpoint APM if…
- Detailed call-stack tracing
- Good for large JVM systems
Watch out for
- Heavy infrastructure needs
- Complex setup
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Beyla or Pinpoint APM better?
Neither is universally better. Pinpoint APM has the larger community, while Grafana Beyla is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Grafana Beyla and Pinpoint APM free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana Beyla is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Pinpoint APM under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana Beyla and Pinpoint APM with Docker?
Grafana Beyla: yes. Pinpoint APM: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Grafana Beyla or Pinpoint APM?
Grafana Beyla has the smaller minimum footprint at 128 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for Pinpoint APM. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.