Grafana Beyla vs Grafana Tempo
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Grafana Tempo
Easy-to-operate, high-scale distributed tracing backend
| Feature | Grafana Beyla | Grafana Tempo |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 86 · Excellent | 90 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,135 | ★ 5,487 |
| First released | 2023 | 2020 |
| Replaces | Datadog APM, New Relic | Datadog APM |
What are Grafana Beyla and Grafana Tempo?
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
Grafana Tempo
Grafana Tempo is a high-scale distributed tracing backend that requires only object storage and integrates with Grafana, Loki, and Prometheus. It indexes only trace IDs to keep operation simple and cheap.
- Object-storage-only backend
- Cheap large-scale tracing
- Grafana integration
- TraceQL query language
Grafana Beyla vs Grafana Tempo: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Grafana Beyla versus AGPL-3.0 for Grafana Tempo. Grafana Beyla is the lighter option, starting around 128 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Grafana Tempo. Grafana Tempo is the more established project (first released 2020), while Grafana Beyla arrived in 2023. Grafana Tempo has the considerably larger community, at 5,487 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 Grafana Tempo if…
- Very cost-effective
- Simple operations
Watch out for
- Best paired with Grafana stack
- Limited standalone UI
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Beyla or Grafana Tempo better?
Neither is universally better. Grafana Tempo has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Grafana Beyla and Grafana Tempo free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana Beyla is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Grafana Tempo under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana Beyla and Grafana Tempo with Docker?
Grafana Beyla: yes. Grafana Tempo: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Grafana Beyla or Grafana Tempo?
Grafana Beyla has the smaller minimum footprint at 128 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Grafana Tempo. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.