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jentry vs Grafana Cloud: an app-monitoring product vs an observability toolkit
Grafana Cloud and jentry both take your OpenTelemetry traces — the difference is what happens next. Grafana hands you world-class building blocks (Tempo for traces, Loki for logs, Mimir for metrics, dashboards to tie them together) and you assemble your observability. jentry hands you a finished application-monitoring product: waterfalls, error grouping, automatic N+1 issues and alerts that exist before you build anything.
jentry is a hosted error-tracking and APM platform — Sentry-SDK-compatible errors plus native OTLP traces, with span-tree waterfalls, automatic performance issues and flat pricing. Grafana Cloud is the hosted LGTM stack: Tempo (traces), Loki (logs), Mimir (Prometheus metrics) and the Grafana dashboarding layer, priced by usage with a generous free tier.
What they have in common
- OpenTelemetry-native: both ingest OTLP from your SDKs or a Collector — instrumentation stays portable either way.
- Both are honest escapes from per-host APM pricing.
- Both have real free tiers you can actually run something on.
The real difference: product vs toolkit
Grafana's model is composability. Traces land in Tempo; to get value you connect them to dashboards, write TraceQL, wire exemplars to metrics, and build the panels your team will look at. Done well, it's extraordinarily powerful — and it's work that someone on your team owns forever.
jentry's model is opinionated app monitoring. Traces land and you already have: a per-route performance page (p50/p95/p99, Apdex, throughput), span-tree waterfalls with errored spans in red, automatic N+1-query / N+1-API / slow-query issues with span evidence, and error tracking with Sentry-style grouping next to it. Nobody builds dashboards to get Tuesday's answer to 'what broke and what's slow'.
jentry vs Grafana Cloud: comparison table
| jentry | Grafana Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Finished app-monitoring product | Composable toolkit (Tempo/Loki/Mimir + dashboards) |
| Pricing shape | Flat: Free / $14 / $49 per month | Usage-based (GB of traces/logs, metric series, users) with free tier |
| OpenTelemetry | Native OTLP/HTTP endpoint (protobuf + JSON) | Native (Tempo/Alloy), first-class |
| Error tracking | Sentry-SDK compatible: grouping, source maps, suspect commits, replays | Not a product — errors live in logs/traces you query yourself |
| Automatic perf issues | N+1 queries, N+1 API calls, slow queries — detected for you | None — you build TraceQL queries/dashboards for patterns |
| Logs & infra metrics | Not in jentry | First-class (Loki, Mimir) — a genuine strength |
| Time to first insight | Minutes after the env var | After you've assembled dashboards/queries |
| Who it's for | Product teams that want answers out of the box | Teams with dashboard culture and platform ownership |
Grafana's offerings and free-tier limits evolve quickly — treat their column as directional and check current docs. The structural difference (toolkit vs product) is stable.
When Grafana Cloud is the better choice
- You're already a Prometheus/Grafana shop and dashboards are how your team thinks.
- You need logs and infrastructure metrics as first-class citizens next to traces.
- You have (or want) a platform owner who curates queries, dashboards and alerts as a product for other teams.
- TraceQL-style ad-hoc trace analytics matters more to you than prebuilt APM views.
When jentry is the better choice
- You want APM + error tracking that works before anyone builds a dashboard.
- Errors deserve a real workflow (grouping, assignment, releases, regressions), not a log query.
- You'd rather have automatic N+1/slow-query issues than write the detection yourself.
- You want a flat, forecastable bill.
They also compose
Plenty of teams keep Grafana for infra metrics + logs and send application traces + errors to jentry. From a Collector it's one more otlphttp exporter pointed at your jentry project — five lines of YAML, fully reversible.
Frequently asked questions
Does jentry replace Grafana dashboards?
It replaces the APM/error slice: performance pages, waterfalls, issue tracking and alerts come prebuilt, and jentry has its own custom dashboards + Discover query builder for app data. It does not replace Grafana for infra metrics or log dashboards.
Is Tempo cheaper since it's usage-based with a free tier?
At small volumes Grafana Cloud's free tier is genuinely generous. As traffic grows you're metering GB of traces plus the metrics/logs around them, and someone maintains the dashboards. jentry stays $14/$49 flat with quotas that shed rather than bill — predictability is the point.
Can I send the same traces to both?
Yes — that's the beauty of OTel. A Collector can export to Tempo and jentry simultaneously while you evaluate; drop one exporter when you decide.
What about Grafana's error tracking?
Grafana doesn't have a Sentry-style error product; exceptions live in logs or trace attributes that you query. jentry ingests the unmodified Sentry SDKs — grouping, source maps, suspect commits, replays — alongside the OTel traces.
Self-hosted Grafana/Tempo vs jentry?
Self-hosting the LGTM stack trades money for ops (object storage, compaction, upgrades). If self-hosting is the requirement, Grafana or SigNoz fit; jentry's proposition is precisely not running any of it.
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