Langfuse
Top pickThe self-hosted default for LLM tracing — MIT core, framework-agnostic.
Langfuse is the most widely adopted open LLM observability platform: tracing, evaluation, prompt management and cost tracking, deployable with Docker on your own infrastructure so traces containing customer data never leave your network. It is deliberately framework-agnostic — LangChain, LlamaIndex, the provider SDKs directly, or OpenTelemetry — which makes it the natural exit from a LangChain-shaped tool. At 32k stars with commits landing daily it is the healthiest project in this category. Licensing needs precision: the core is MIT Expat, while the ee/ directories carry a separate enterprise licence.
What it does well
- +Self-hosted: prompts and completions stay inside your network
- +Framework-agnostic — not tied to any one orchestration library
- +Tracing, evals, prompt management and cost tracking in one tool
- +32k stars and daily commits — the most active project in this category
Where it falls short
- −Self-hosting means running Postgres, ClickHouse and the collector yourself
- −The MIT core stops at the ee/ directories; SSO and some enterprise features sit behind a separate licence
- −Evaluation tooling is less polished than LangSmith's if you live inside LangChain
- −Trace storage grows fast — retention policy is your problem to plan
Langfuse as an alternative to
Where Langfuse shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.
Langfuse head-to-head
Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.