Kibana vs Uptrace
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Kibana
Visualization and exploration for Elasticsearch data
VS
Uptrace
OpenTelemetry-based tracing, metrics, and logs tool
| Feature | Kibana | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 96 · Excellent | 88 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSL-1.1 |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 21,299 | ★ 4,290 |
| First released | 2013 | 2021 |
| Replaces | Splunk, Datadog | Datadog, New Relic |
What are Kibana and Uptrace?
Kibana
Kibana is a visualization and management interface for Elasticsearch, widely used for log analytics and observability. It provides dashboards, search, and alerting over indexed operational data.
- Log and metric dashboards
- Discover search interface
- Alerting and machine learning
- Maps and visualizations
Uptrace
Uptrace is an open-source observability tool that uses OpenTelemetry to collect distributed traces, metrics, and logs. It stores data in ClickHouse and provides a clean UI for analyzing application performance.
- Distributed tracing
- Metrics and logs support
- ClickHouse storage
- OpenTelemetry-native
Kibana vs Uptrace: key differences
Kibana is written in TypeScript, while Uptrace is built with Go. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Kibana versus BSL-1.1 for Uptrace. Uptrace is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Kibana. Kibana is the more established project (first released 2013), while Uptrace arrived in 2021. Kibana has the considerably larger community, at 21,299 GitHub stars versus 4,290.
Why pick each one
Choose Kibana if…
- Rich visualization options
- Mature ecosystem
Watch out for
- Tied to Elasticsearch
- Heavy resource usage
Choose Uptrace if…
- Efficient ClickHouse backend
- Easy to deploy
Watch out for
- BSL license restrictions
- Smaller community
Frequently asked questions
Is Kibana or Uptrace better?
Neither is universally better. Kibana has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Kibana and Uptrace free and open-source?
Yes. Kibana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Uptrace under BSL-1.1. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Kibana and Uptrace with Docker?
Kibana: yes. Uptrace: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Kibana or Uptrace?
Uptrace has the smaller minimum footprint at 512 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Kibana. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.