Frequently Asked Questions

Question 1

Is OpenObserve a good SigNoz alternative?

Accepted Answer

Yes, if you like SigNoz's open-source, OpenTelemetry-native approach but want simpler operations and cheaper storage. Both cover logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, and alerts. The core difference is architecture: SigNoz stores data in ClickHouse on disks, while OpenObserve stores compressed Parquet on object storage (S3/GCS/Azure/MinIO) with stateless compute. That means no database cluster to operate and much lower long-term retention costs. OpenObserve also adds built-in RUM with session replay and VRL-powered pipelines.

Question 2

How does OpenObserve pricing compare to SigNoz Cloud?

Accepted Answer

SigNoz Cloud starts at a $49/month minimum and bills logs and traces at a rate set by your retention tier: $0.30/GB at the default 15 days, $0.40/GB at 30 days, and $0.60/GB at 90 days, plus $0.10 per million metric samples. OpenObserve Cloud has no monthly minimum: you start at $0 and pay a flat $0.50/GB ingested with 30-day retention included; extending retention adds $0.02/GB per additional 30-day period instead of repricing all ingest, so beyond roughly 60 days OpenObserve is cheaper (about $0.54/GB vs $0.60/GB at 90 days) and the gap widens from there. On the Enterprise plan, Bring Your Own Bucket keeps long-term data in a bucket you own at commodity S3 prices ($0.023/GB), and self-hosting OpenObserve does the same.

Question 3

How hard is it to migrate from SigNoz to OpenObserve?

Accepted Answer

Easier than most migrations, because both platforms are OpenTelemetry-native. Your instrumentation stays exactly as it is; you add an OTLP exporter for OpenObserve to your existing OTel Collector and dual-ship while you validate. The real work is recreating dashboards and alert rules, which most teams complete in days to a few weeks depending on how many they have. There is no proprietary agent to rip out.

Question 4

What is SigNoz good at, and what would I give up?

Accepted Answer

SigNoz is a solid product: genuinely open source, OTel-native, with a polished APM experience and an approachable query builder. If your team is deeply invested in ClickHouse SQL for trace analytics, that's a real strength. What you take on with SigNoz self-hosted is operating ClickHouse (plus ZooKeeper), sharding, rebalancing, disk management, and its frontend monitoring lacks session replay. OpenObserve trades the ClickHouse dependency for object storage and stateless nodes, and includes RUM and pipelines out of the box.

Question 5

Is OpenObserve open source and self-hostable like SigNoz?

Accepted Answer

Yes. OpenObserve is open source and you can self-host it as a single binary, a single container, or an HA cluster via Helm on Kubernetes. Unlike SigNoz self-hosted, there is no external database to run: OpenObserve embeds its storage engine and writes to local disk or your own object storage bucket. Enterprise features like SSO and RBAC are available for self-hosted deployments as well.

Question 6

Why does object storage matter versus ClickHouse disks?

Accepted Answer

Three reasons. Cost: S3-class storage runs around $0.023/GB versus significantly more for the block storage (plus replicas) ClickHouse needs. Operations: disks fill up, need resizing, and shard rebalancing is manual work; object storage is effectively infinite and fully managed. Durability: your telemetry sits in your own bucket in an open format (Apache Parquet), replicated by the cloud provider; losing a node never means losing data.

Question 7

Is OpenObserve enterprise-ready?

Accepted Answer

Yes. OpenObserve is SOC2 Type II certified and ISO 27001 compliant. We serve thousands of deployments, including Fortune 100 enterprises; our largest single customer ingests more than 4 PB of data per day, with individual clusters sustaining over 1 PB/day. Enterprise features include RBAC, SSO, sensitive data redaction, and dedicated support.

Feature	SigNoz	OpenObserve	Reference Links
Feature parity: logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, alerts, pipelines	✓	✓	Logs Metrics Traces Dashboards Alerts Pipelines
OpenTelemetry native	✓	✓	OTLP over gRPC and HTTP
Storage backend	ClickHouse on block storage / disks	Object storage: S3, GCS, Azure Blob, MinIO	Learn more about Storage backend
Deployment footprint	Multi-service stack: ClickHouse, ZooKeeper, backend, collector	Single binary or single container; HA via Helm	Learn more about Deployment footprint
Scaling model	Scale ClickHouse: shards, replicas, rebalancing	Stateless nodes; compute and storage separated	Learn more about Scaling model
Long-term retention	Limited by ClickHouse disk; cloud default 15 days for logs/traces	Months or years on object storage without budget blowouts	Learn more about Long-term retention
Real User Monitoring (RUM)	Frontend monitoring (Web Vitals); no session replay	Built-in RUM with session replay and error tracking	Learn more about Real User Monitoring (RUM)
Data pipelines	Log pipelines via OTel processors	VRL pipelines for logs, metrics, and traces at ingest	Learn more about Data pipelines
Query experience	Form-based query builder + ClickHouse SQL / PromQL	Click-through explorers, drag-and-drop dashboards, standard SQL + PromQL	No query language needed for everyday work
Dashboards	Form-based builder, 7 panel types	Drag-and-drop builder, 19 prebuilt chart types + custom (200+ via Apache ECharts)	Learn more about Dashboards
Open source	✓	✓	-
IAM & SSO	✓	✓	SAML, OIDC, LDAP, role-based access

OpenObserve vs SigNoz

Why teams switch from SigNoz

No ClickHouse Cluster to Run

Object Storage, Not Disks

Stateless Scaling

Built-in RUM & Session Replay

Same OTel Standards, No Lock-in

Pipelines Built In

See how OpenObserve replaces SigNoz

Feature comparison

Migrating from SigNoz

Repoint your OpenTelemetry Collector

Rebuild dashboards and alerts

Cut over and retire the ClickHouse stack