Jaeger

What it is

Jaeger is an open-source distributed tracing system for collecting, storing, and visualizing traces.

Key features

• Tracing - Distributed tracing collection and querying.
• Storage - Pluggable storage backends (deployment-dependent).
• UI - Trace search and visualization UI.
• OpenTelemetry - Interoperability with OpenTelemetry exporters and SDKs.

Strengths

• Tracing - Distributed tracing collection and querying.
• Storage - Pluggable storage backends (deployment-dependent).
• UI - Trace search and visualization UI.

Trade-offs

• Scope - Tracing only; metrics and logs require separate systems.
• Operations - Storage backend and retention are operational responsibilities.
• Scale - High-cardinality tracing can stress storage and indexing.

Pricing

Open-source software. Direct license cost is zero; costs are typically infrastructure, operations, and optional paid support or hosting.