Groundcover vs Zipkin
Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?
The short answer
Groundcover is the stronger AI pick in Observability: it has a visibility score of 2.4 versus 0.3 for Zipkin.
Choose Groundcover if…
- You want the brand AI engines rank higher (2.4 vs 0.3)
- You need a self-hosted or on-premises option
- You need GDPR or CCPA coverage
- Predictable flat per-node pricing
Choose Zipkin if…
No clear advantage in the published data.
AI visibility side by side
Latest weekly run · Nov 3
| Metric | Groundcover | Zipkin |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility score | 2.4% | 0.3% |
| Change vs last week | New | New |
| Rank in Observability | #23 | #36 |
| Share of voice | 0.5% | 0.1% |
| Mentions this run | 3 | 1 |
| Positive in AI answers | 0% | 0% |
The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days
Groundcover 0pp · Zipkin 0pp over 0 weekly runs.
Engine by engine
Groundcover leads on 1 of 3 engines
Head to head in AI answers
0 engine answers name both brands
Features, pricing & fit
| Dimension | Groundcover | Zipkin |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per seat | — |
| Entry price | Free; paid from $30 per seat / mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Deployment | Bring Your Own Cloud: the data plane runs inside the customer's VPC and is managed by groundcover. A fully on-premises option is offered on the On Premise plan. | Self-hosted: run the self-contained executable jar or the openzipkin/zipkin Docker image. The server requires JRE 17 or newer and serves the UI on port 9411 by default. |
| Compliance | GDPR, CCPA | — |
| Support | Slack community support (Free plan), Standard support (Pro plan), Premium support (Enterprise plan) | Zipkin Gitter chat channel, GitHub issues |
| Founded | 2021 | 2012 |
| Headquarters | Tel Aviv, Israel | — |
| Employees | 51–200 | — |
| Funding | Series A · $160M raised | — |
| Best for | Engineering teams running cloud-native and Kubernetes workloads that want full-stack observability without code changes and predictable pricing. | Teams troubleshooting latency problems in service architectures |
Plans side by side
Groundcover
Zipkin
Pricing not available.
Pros and cons
Themes from the AI answers that mention each brand
Groundcover
- Predictable flat per-node pricing
- Pricing claims should be verified before purchase
Zipkin
Profile in progress.
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 100%·next run
Cite as: SlateIndex, “Groundcover vs Zipkin”, https://slateindex.ai/compare/groundcover-vs-zipkin, data of Nov 3, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.