TempoOpen-source, high-scale distributed tracing backend
vs
ThanosHighly available Prometheus setup with long term storage capabilities
Comparison · Observability · weekly run Nov 3
Tempo vs Thanos
Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?
The short answer
Tempo is the stronger AI pick in Observability: it has a visibility score of 7.1 versus 0 for Thanos.
Choose Tempo if…
- You want the brand AI engines rank higher (7.1 vs 0)
- You need a self-hosted or on-premises option
- You need SOC 2 or ISO/IEC 27001 or ISO 22301 or PCI DSS v4.0.1 or GDPR or FedRAMP High or TISAX or CSA STAR or TX-RAMP Level 2 coverage
- Open-source and cost-effective
Choose Thanos if…
No clear advantage in the published data.
AI visibility side by side
Latest weekly run · Nov 3
| Metric | Tempo | Thanos |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility score | 7.1% | 0% |
| Change vs last week | New | New |
| Rank in Observability | #12 | #42 |
| Share of voice | 3.1% | 0% |
| Mentions this run | 18 | 0 |
| Positive in AI answers | 6% | — |
The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days
Tempo 0pp · Thanos 0pp over 0 weekly runs.
Engine by engine
Tempo leads on 3 of 3 engines
ChatGPT
AI Mode
Perplexity
TempoThanos
Head to head in AI answers
0 engine answers name both brands
0Tempo ranked higher
0Thanos ranked higher
Features, pricing & fit
| Dimension | Tempo | Thanos |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Managed as Grafana Cloud or self-hosted on Kubernetes via Helm | Self-hosted open source; components can run without Kubernetes |
| Compliance | SOC 2, ISO/IEC 27001, ISO 22301, PCI DSS v4.0.1, GDPR, FedRAMP High, TISAX, CSA STAR, TX-RAMP Level 2 | — |
| Support | — | Community meetings, Slack, GitHub issues |
| Headquarters | New York, NY | — |
| Employees | 1,001–5,000 | — |
| Funding | Series E · $1100M raised | — |
| Best for | — | Teams running Prometheus who need a global query view and long-term metric storage |
Pros and cons
Themes from the AI answers that mention each brand
Tempo
- Open-source and cost-effective
- Mature Prometheus, Loki and Grafana ecosystem
- Distributed tracing for traces
- Integrates smoothly with OpenTelemetry
- Managed option with a permanent free tier
- Demands significant internal engineering time to maintain and scale
Thanos
Profile in progress.
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 100%·next run
Cite as: SlateIndex, “Tempo vs Thanos”, https://slateindex.ai/compare/tempo-vs-thanos, data of Nov 3, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.