Last updated: March 2026
TraceKit vs Jaeger: Managed APM vs Self-Hosted Tracing
Jaeger is a CNCF-graduated distributed tracing system created at Uber. It excels at one thing: collecting and visualizing traces. TraceKit gives you that plus error tracking, frontend monitoring, session replay, and live code debugging -- fully managed at $29/month with zero infrastructure to operate.
Information is based on publicly available data as of March 2026. Jaeger is an open-source project -- check the official documentation for the latest.
Why developers choose TraceKit
Zero Infrastructure
TraceKit is fully managed -- no Elasticsearch cluster, no Cassandra nodes, no collector scaling. Jaeger requires you to provision, configure, and maintain the entire storage and collection infrastructure yourself.
Live Code Monitoring
Set live breakpoints in production code. Jaeger shows you where time was spent in traces, but cannot help you inspect variable state or debug logic errors at runtime.
Full-Stack Observability
Traces, errors, frontend monitoring, session replay, metrics, and dashboards in one tool. Jaeger provides distributed tracing only -- no metrics, no logs, no error tracking, no frontend monitoring.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | TraceKit | Jaeger |
|---|---|---|
| Tracing | ||
| Distributed Tracing | Yes (managed) | Yes (self-hosted) |
| Auto-Instrumentation | Yes (OpenTelemetry) | Yes (OpenTelemetry / Jaeger clients) |
| Trace Visualization | Waterfall + Flamegraph | Waterfall + DAG |
| Adaptive Sampling | Yes | Yes (head-based + adaptive) |
| Monitoring | ||
| Live Code Monitoring | Yes -- breakpoints without redeploy | No |
| Error Tracking | Yes (browser + backend) | No |
| Custom Metrics | Yes | No (tracing only) |
| Alerting | Yes | No (requires external tool) |
| Custom Dashboards | Yes | No (Jaeger UI only) |
| Frontend Observability | ||
| Session Replay | Yes (linked to traces) | No |
| Source Maps | Yes (debug ID + upload CLI) | No |
| Browser-to-Backend Traces | Yes (W3C traceparent) | No |
| Platform | ||
| Setup Time | Under 5 minutes | Hours to days (infrastructure) |
| Managed Service | Yes | No (self-hosted only) |
| Pricing | ||
| Pricing Model | $29/month flat | Free (software) + infrastructure costs |
Pricing Comparison
TraceKit
$29/month
Flat monthly
One price includes distributed tracing, live code monitoring, custom metrics, dashboards, alerts, and security scanning. Zero infrastructure to manage.
None. What you see is what you pay.
Jaeger
Free (software), $100-300+/month (infrastructure)
Self-hosted (open source)
Free and open-source software. Running Jaeger in production requires a storage backend -- typically Cassandra or Elasticsearch. A minimal production setup costs $100-300+/month for the storage cluster alone, plus the Jaeger collector and query services.
Engineering time for setup, maintenance, upgrades, scaling, and on-call. Storage backend tuning (index rollover, retention policies, capacity planning). No managed support -- your team is the on-call for both Jaeger and its storage.
Pricing considerations with Jaeger
- Elasticsearch or Cassandra cluster costs $100-300+/month for a minimal production setup
- Engineering time for Jaeger operations is invisible but real -- upgrades, scaling, index management, on-call
- No built-in alerting means you need a separate monitoring stack on top of Jaeger
- Storage costs grow linearly with trace volume -- high-throughput apps can push infrastructure well past $500/month
Setup Comparison
See how TraceKit's setup compares to Jaeger:
// Jaeger: Deploy collector + storage backend
// docker-compose up -d jaeger-collector jaeger-query elasticsearch
// export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4317
// // Configure sampling, storage retention, index rollover...
// TraceKit: One-line SDK setup, zero infrastructure
tracekit.Init("tk_your_key")When to choose Jaeger
We believe in honesty. Jaeger is a great product, and there are situations where it is the better choice.
- You need pure open-source with zero vendor lock-in and full control over your data
- You already operate Cassandra or Elasticsearch and have capacity to spare
- You only need distributed tracing -- not metrics, errors, or frontend monitoring
- You have a large platform engineering team comfortable with infrastructure operations
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. TraceKit provides full distributed tracing with waterfall and flamegraph visualization, plus error tracking, frontend monitoring, session replay, and live code debugging. If you need pure open-source with no vendor dependency and full control over your storage backend, Jaeger remains the best choice.
The software is free, but production infrastructure is not. A minimal Elasticsearch cluster for Jaeger costs $100-300/month. Add engineering time for maintenance, upgrades, and on-call -- a realistic total cost of ownership is $300-800+/month when factoring in team time. TraceKit is $29/month with zero ops burden.
Jaeger is designed for large organizations with platform engineering teams. Small teams typically find the infrastructure overhead -- storage backend, collector scaling, retention management -- outweighs the benefits of self-hosting. TraceKit is purpose-built for small teams: instant setup, zero infrastructure, flat pricing.
Yes. TraceKit is built on OpenTelemetry, the same standard Jaeger now supports. If you have existing OpenTelemetry instrumentation, you can point your exporters to TraceKit with a configuration change -- no code modifications needed.
Yes. Since both support OpenTelemetry, migration is a configuration change: update your OTLP exporter endpoint from your Jaeger collector to TraceKit. Your existing instrumentation, span attributes, and context propagation all carry over.
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