5 categories · RankedHoneycomb
Honeycomb is an observability platform for engineering teams, used to debug distributed systems by exploring detailed, high-cardinality trace and event data · honeycomb.io ↗
Read the same way at every company size.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
Grafana is first at 38%.
Grafana is first at 32%. 1 of 14 models made it the first choice when asked directly.
Datadog is first at 38%.
Why models recommend it
“I'd suggest Grafana Cloud or Honeycomb as the starting point”Kimi K2 · Direct question · first choice
“For High-Cardinality & Developer-Centric APM: Honeycomb (predictable event-based pricing, excellent for distributed tracing)”Gemini 3.5 Flash · Negative question · alternative
“The Engineering-First Choice: Honeycomb ... Trade-off: It lacks some of the "batteries included" infrastructure features”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Paraphrase question · alternative
“Overkill for small teams, but excellent for solving complex, intermittent latency issues in large-scale architectures.”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Direct question · alternative
What gives them pause
“be cautious about Datadog/New Relic/Honeycomb when cost predictability or data residency dominates”Perplexity Sonar · Negative question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as Honeycomb, over the 140 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 119 | 22 | Compare → | |
| 99 | 24 | Compare → | |
| 72 | 20 | Compare → | |
| 72 | 13 | View → | |
| 52 | 0 | View → | |
| 47 | 5 | Compare → | |
| 41 | 0 | View → | |
| 38 | 7 | View → | |
| 31 | 5 | View → | |
| 27 | 15 | View → |
What the models named instead of Honeycomb →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
At a glance
Stated on Honeycomb's own site, not checked by Gane.
- For
- Engineering teams
- Price stated
- Free, Pro, and Enterprise
- Starting price
- 150
- Free plan or trial
- Start for free
- Integrations
- 40
- Certifications
- SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA, EU-US DPF, UK Extension to EU-US DPF, Swiss-US DPF, CCPA
- Customers named
- Slack, Intercom, Dropbox, Homeaglow, HiPages, Zeta Global, Fenris Creations, tastytrade
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 105 of the 140 answers that named Honeycomb and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
224 of the 252 domain citations in answers naming Honeycomb came from a third party's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 8 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 6 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Kimi K2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 6 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 718 | 27 | 2026-09-21 | Observability, Logs | |
| Webinar or virtual event | 78 | 2 | 2026-08-26 | APM, Feature flags | |
| Conference or event | 77 | 13 | 2026-09-25 | ||
| Podcast or video | 73 | 2 | 2026-09-03 | ||
| Case study | 58 | 3 | 2026-08-06 | APM | |
| Report or ebook | 49 | 1 | 2026-07-08 | Observability, APM | |
| Glossary or explainer | 16 | 1 | 2026-08-17 | APM | |
| Comparison | 15 | 3 | 2026-09-08 | Data warehouses, APM | |
| News or press | 4 | 0 | 2026-03-12 | ||
| Template or tool | 1 | 0 | 2024-09-20 |
Most recent
- 2026-09-25Battleshipsforjackhenry conference or event
- 2026-09-21How adaptive tail sampling works blog
- 2026-09-14How canvas powers ai agent development feedback loop blog
- 2026-09-11Ai in finance fall conference or event
- 2026-09-09Ai norms values part 3 things we hold true blog
- 2026-09-08Wide events vs three pillars ai observability costs comparison
Events in person
- October 6, 2026 to October 7, 2026O11yDay LondonConvene Bishopsgate, London · hosts
- November 30, 2026 to December 3, 2026AWS re:Invent 2026Booth 1871 · exhibits
- December 1, 2026Topgolf with Honeycomb x CloudelligentTopgolf Las Vegas · hosts
- December 2, 2026How Observability Evolved From Dashboards to Agents Writing CodePartner Advantage Zone · speaks
As the event pages on honeycomb.io state them, read September 28, 2026.
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page honeycomb.io exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.