groundcover
Application performance monitoring (APM) tools
Cloud infrastructure monitoring software
Log monitoring software
Observability solution suites software
Data observability software
Monitoring software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
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$30 per host, per month
Free TrialFree version
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What is groundcover
groundcover is an observability platform focused on monitoring Kubernetes and cloud-native environments using eBPF-based data collection. It provides infrastructure and application visibility across metrics, logs, and traces to support incident response, performance troubleshooting, and capacity analysis. The product targets SRE, platform, and DevOps teams operating containerized workloads and aims to reduce reliance on per-language agents by collecting telemetry from the kernel and cluster layers.
eBPF-based deep visibility
groundcover uses eBPF to capture low-level signals from hosts and Kubernetes nodes, which can improve visibility into network, process, and system behavior without instrumenting every application. This approach is well-suited to dynamic container environments where workloads change frequently. It can help teams investigate performance issues that are hard to see with only application-level instrumentation.
Kubernetes-first operational focus
The product is designed around Kubernetes concepts such as clusters, nodes, namespaces, and services, which aligns with how platform teams operate. It supports troubleshooting workflows that typically require correlating infrastructure behavior with service health. This can reduce time spent stitching together separate tools for cluster-level diagnosis.
Unified telemetry workflows
groundcover positions itself as a single environment for exploring and correlating multiple telemetry types used in observability programs. Consolidating investigation workflows can simplify on-call operations and reduce context switching. For teams standardizing on one platform, this can streamline access control, dashboards, and incident triage practices.
Kubernetes-centric scope
Organizations with significant non-Kubernetes estates (legacy VMs, on-prem middleware, or mainframe-adjacent systems) may find coverage less complete. Teams may still need additional monitoring for non-container infrastructure and certain managed services. This can limit the product’s suitability as a single monitoring standard in heterogeneous environments.
eBPF operational constraints
eBPF-based collection can be sensitive to kernel versions, OS distributions, and security hardening policies. Some environments restrict eBPF usage, requiring additional approvals or configuration changes. These constraints can increase rollout complexity compared with purely user-space agents.
Ecosystem and maturity considerations
Compared with long-established observability suites, some organizations may find fewer third-party integrations, prebuilt content, or community patterns depending on their stack. Advanced governance features (for example, complex multi-tenant controls or highly customized data pipelines) may require validation during evaluation. Buyers should confirm roadmap fit for enterprise-scale requirements such as global data residency and compliance reporting.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 (free forever) | 12-hour data retention; Slack community support; No credit card required; BYOC deployment (Start exploring for free). |
| Pro | $30 per host, per month | BYOC deployment; All integrations and data sources; SSO support; Standard data retention; Standard support. |
| Enterprise | $35 per host, per month | BYOC deployment; Everything in Pro plus RBAC support; Unlimited data retention; Premium support; Standard support. |
| On Premise | $50 per host, per month | Full on-prem deployment (self-hosted data plane & UI); Designed for high-compliance/regulatory environments; Contact sales for details. |
