BCC

At a glance

• Editor score
  7.3 / 10
• Pricing
  Free plan
• Best for
  Engineers building custom eBPF tracing
• Free plan
  Yes
• Paid from
  Free
• Deployment model
  Self-hosted
• Facts checked
  22 Sep 2026

• Where it wins

  • Covers kernel, user-space, syscall, network, I/O, profiling, and memory analysis
  • Supports C instrumentation with Python and Lua front ends
  • Offers histogram, map, perf-buffer, and ring-buffer output APIs

• Where it doesn't

  • Linux-focused and self-hosted rather than a hosted observability service
  • Requires custom development and operational ownership
  • Does not provide a managed observability experience or broad integrations

Our verdict on BCC

BCC is an open-source toolkit for developing and running eBPF-based Linux tracing programs. It is aimed at engineers who need to investigate kernel and application behavior, build custom instrumentation, or use focused command-line tools for troubleshooting and performance analysis. The toolkit runs on Linux systems, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Gentoo, openSUSE, RHEL, Amazon Linux, Alpine Linux, and WSL, with installation through distribution packages or from source.

Its main strength is breadth across low-level observability. BCC supports kprobes, kretprobes, tracepoints, raw tracepoints, and kfuncs for kernel tracing, alongside uprobes, uretprobes, and USDT probes for user-space tracing. Engineers can examine system calls and processes, analyze disk I/O, filesystems, cache behavior, and latency, inspect network connections and retransmissions, instrument sockets, raw packets, and XDP, and perform CPU stack sampling or memory-allocation leak analysis. C-based instrumentation and Python or Lua front ends provide multiple ways to create and run programs.

BCC is a strong fit when control, Linux visibility, and custom eBPF development matter more than a packaged monitoring workflow. Its self-hosted model gives teams responsibility for installation, execution, output handling, and ongoing maintenance. The available output APIs—histograms, maps, perf buffers, and ring buffers—support different collection patterns, but they also assume engineering familiarity with eBPF and the surrounding Linux environment. Teams seeking hosted dashboards, managed operations, or an integrated observability ecosystem should choose a different type of product. BCC suits practitioners who want direct access to Linux tracing mechanisms and the flexibility to shape their own tools.

Your product? Our editors can test BCC in depth and publish a review, labelled as paid · from $149/mo →

BCC pricing

BCC fact sheet

Alternatives to BCC

• CorootBroad eBPF observability with a free edition and $1-per-core Standard pricing.9.3
• DeepFlowA broad open-source platform for application, network, and system observability.9.1
• groundcoverA broad eBPF observability platform for teams connecting traces, RUM, logs, and metrics.9.0

See all BCC alternatives →

Featured on iTechGuides

BCC is listed in our eBPF Observability Tools directory. Add the badge to your site — it links back to this page.

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Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026

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Last updated 7 Oct 2026 · How we research and update