Respan vs Traceloop (2026)
Updated February 28, 2026
vs
Overview
Rating
10.0 / 10
Rating
10.0 / 10
Best For
Engineering and product teams running AI agents and LLM apps in production
Best For
Teams already using Datadog/Splunk wanting LLM observability
Product Summary
Respan is LLM observability built into an AI router: nested traces for every agent run, evals on live production traffic, and a click from any score to its trace.
Product Summary
The OpenTelemetry standard for AI. Pipes LLM telemetry into Datadog, Splunk, or any OTel backend.
Starting Price
$0
Starting Price
open-source
Free Trial
Yes
Free Trial
No
Free Version
Yes
Free Version
No
Website
Website
Key features
Core capabilities each platform advertises.
- Nested traces for every LLM call, tool run, and agent turn
- Threads for multi-turn sessions
- Online evals on live production traffic
- LLM-judge, code, and human evaluators
- Datasets from production logs and experiments at scale
- Monitors with Slack, email, and webhook alerts
- Prompt versioning and deployment without code changes
- OpenTelemetry
- OpenLLMetry
- Vendor-neutral
- OTel integration
Strengths and tradeoffs
What each tool does well, and the limitations to keep in mind.
Pros
- Every score links to the trace that produced it
- Evals run on live production traffic, not only on test sets
- Built into the router, so there's no separate gateway to integrate
- Monitors alert the moment a metric breaches
- Unlimited seats on the free plan
Cons
- The free plan retains data for 7 days
- The free plan includes 1k scores and 2 evaluators
- Ingestion throughput is metered per tier, starting at 412 logs per minute on Free
Pros
- Acquired by ServiceNow for $60-80M providing strong financial backing and integration opportunities
- Built on OpenTelemetry standards with open-source OpenLLMetry SDK
- Recognized as Gartner Cool Vendor demonstrating industry validation
- One-line code integration for quick setup and deployment
- Enterprise-ready with SOC 2, HIPAA compliance and multiple deployment options
Cons
- ServiceNow acquisition may lead to platform changes, pricing adjustments, or strategic shifts
- Small team of 9 employees may be absorbed into larger ServiceNow organization affecting support
- Limited transparent pricing information following acquisition
- Uncertainty around long-term product roadmap under new ownership
Respan or Traceloop — which should you choose?
Choose Respan if you wantChoose if you want
- Debugging agent failures down to the step that broke
- Catching quality regressions before users report them
- Turning production failures into test datasets
- Testing a prompt or model change against real cases before shipping
- Attributing LLM cost to each end customer
Choose Traceloop if you wantChoose if you want
Data not available
Compare Respan and Traceloop on your own traffic
10KFree traces/mo
1,000+Models
5 minSetup
Respan lets you trace LLM and agent calls across any model or framework, A/B test prompts on production traffic, and route requests across 1,000+ models through one gateway.
Try Respan free