Honeycomb alternative: Telemetry Machine vs Honeycomb
Both store OpenTelemetry traces and logs as events and price by event volume, with unlimited seats.
List prices as of 28 October 2026. Honeycomb sources: pricing, 2026 Pro plan changes and usage and retention.
| Telemetry Machine | Honeycomb | |
|---|---|---|
| Plans | 4 plans, $50 to $1,000 a month, each with an event allowance. 5 metric points count as 1 event. | Free: 20M events and 100M metric points a month. Pro: from $150 a month for 50M events and 250M metric points, up to 750M events. Enterprise: quoted. |
| Per million events | $1.00 (Starter) to $0.50 (Scale) | $3.00 on Pro. Legacy Pro: $1.30 until 31 December 2026. |
| 50M spans and logs a month | $50 (Starter) | $150 (Pro) |
| 750M spans and logs a month | $500 (Business) | $2,250 (Pro) |
| 2B spans and logs a month | $1,000 (Scale) | Enterprise, quoted, from 10B events a year |
| Counted as events | Spans, log records and JSON events. A span's events don't count again. | Spans, logs, span events and links |
| Retention | 60 days | 60 days. Time-series metrics: 13 months by default. |
| OpenTelemetry | OTLP from OpenTelemetry SDKs or your own Collector | OTLP |
| Querying | Query builder in the app. SQL with joins, subqueries and window functions from tm-cli and MCP. | Query Builder with relational and calculated fields |
| Outliers | Surface: select outliers on a heatmap to see what sets them apart | BubbleUp: select data on a heatmap to compare it with the rest |
| SLOs | 5 to 100 included, $10 a month for each extra | 2 on Pro. From 100 on Enterprise. |
| Dashboards | Dashboards of query widgets | Boards with query, SLO and text panels |
| MCP server | Hosted, with OAuth and a Claude Code plugin. Your agent instruments your app, creates datasets and keys, and checks that data arrives. | On every plan, with OAuth and a Claude Code plugin. An onboarding prompt can instrument your app. |
Costs assume spans without span events or links, which Honeycomb counts as events.
Telemetry Machine stores data in the US.
Run both
Your Collector can send the same data to both, with no change to your code.
- Add Telemetry Machine as a second exporter on your OpenTelemetry Collector, next to the one you have.
- Compare them during the 14-day free trial.
- Switch: remove the old exporter.
14-day free trial. No credit card required.