SigNoz: OpenTelemetry-Based Observability Without Giving Up Control
Most monitoring stacks either cost a fortune, or they flood you with complexity before you even get your first chart. SigNoz is different. It’s built on OpenTelemetry, doesn’t lock you into a cloud vendor, and gives you full-stack tracing, metrics, and logs — all in one dashboard you host yourself.
If you’ve been juggling Prometheus, Jaeger, Grafana, and Loki just to figure out why an endpoint is slow, SigNoz simplifies that into one interface. No duct tape. No guesswork.
What It Actually Offers
| Component | What You Get |
| Application Tracing | Distributed tracing using OpenTelemetry — visualize spans, errors |
| Metrics Dashboard | Track p99 latency, request rates, error %, infrastructure metrics |
| Log Viewer | Search, filter, and correlate logs directly from the UI |
| Service Map | Auto-generated map of how services talk to each other |
| Exceptions Panel | View stack traces and error breakdowns across services |
| Custom Dashboards | Create charts using PromQL-like syntax |
| Self-Hosted | Run on your infra — no SaaS required |
| OpenTelemetry-native | Works with any language/library that supports OTel |
| ClickHouse backend | Fast storage with compression and columnar queries |
| Alerting (beta) | Basic alert rules for metrics and traces |
Who Uses SigNoz (And Why)
SigNoz hits a good middle ground. It’s not as polished as commercial APMs, but it gives teams control over how and where data is stored, with just enough UI polish to be usable daily.
It’s a great fit for:
– Backend teams building microservices who need full trace visibility
– Startups that want observability but can’t afford DataDog or New Relic
– Kubernetes-heavy environments that already use OpenTelemetry agents
– Engineers tired of stitching together Prometheus + Grafana + Jaeger + Loki
– Devs trying to debug production issues without digging through 5 tools
It’s also good for compliance-conscious orgs — no telemetry leaves your infrastructure.
How to Deploy (Docker Compose Example)
1. Clone the repo:
git clone https://github.com/SigNoz/signoz.git
cd signoz/deploy/docker
2. Launch stack:
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yaml up -d
3. Open the UI:
http://localhost:3301
4. Point your OpenTelemetry SDKs to:
http://:4317 (gRPC)
http://:4318 (HTTP)
It works out of the box for many languages (Node.js, Go, Java, Python, etc.)
What to Watch Out For
– UI still evolving — some charts are rough or missing polish
– Alerting is early-stage — not production-ready for all use cases
– Docs can feel inconsistent at times, especially for advanced configs
– Requires ClickHouse — powerful but unfamiliar to many teams
– Works best with OpenTelemetry — not ideal for legacy agents or exporters
– Resource usage isn’t tiny — make sure you’ve got memory headroom
SigNoz won’t magically fix your stack, but it will give you visibility over what’s actually happening. And if you’re tired of vendor lock-in and monthly bills that look like phone numbers, this is the open-source alternative you might want to try before buying something else.
