groundcover review
eBPF observability with tracing, dependency maps, log correlation, and RUM.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
groundcover is a cloud-native observability platform for engineering teams operating Kubernetes and other cloud environments. Its eBPF sensor collects application metrics and traces without application code changes, covering API calls, database queries, message queues, and network calls. The platform also includes distributed and transaction tracing, live service dependency mapping, golden-signal monitoring, SLO alerts, infrastructure events, and real-user monitoring with browser events, errors, performance metrics, and session recording. It is suited to teams that want application and infrastructure context in one monitoring workflow.
Pricing follows a freemium model with four monthly plans priced per host. Free costs $0 per host per month and includes 12-hour data retention, Slack community support, no credit card requirement, and free-forever access. Pro costs $30 per host per month and adds all available integrations and data sources, SSO support, standard data retention, and standard support. Enterprise costs $35 per host per month and adds RBAC, unlimited data retention, and premium support. On Premise costs $50 per host per month and provides a self-hosted data plane, self-hosted UI, and isolated authentication. Teams should compare retention, access control, and deployment requirements before choosing a tier.
The platform connects with OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Amazon CloudWatch, Datadog, Istio, Google Cloud Monitoring, Fluent Bit, Fluentd, Logstash, StatsD, and Telegraf. Slack, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and Microsoft Teams support notification workflows. Its central strength is correlation: traces can be analyzed alongside logs, metrics, infrastructure events, and RUM data, while dependency maps provide service context. Teams seeking broad Kubernetes observability across cloud or self-hosted environments should consider groundcover. It is less suitable for organizations that need unlimited retention or RBAC without moving beyond the Free or Pro plans.
groundcover pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Collects application telemetry without code changes
- Combines tracing, logs, metrics, events, and RUM analysis
- Offers cloud and self-hosted deployment options
- Where it doesn't
- Free plan retains data for 12 hours
- RBAC is limited to the Enterprise plan
- Paid plans start at $30 per host per month
groundcover fact sheet, pricing and score →
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