beacon.sh vs Better Stack
beacon.sh and Better Stack are both uptime & monitoring tools. beacon.sh is aimed at developers and enterprise, while Better Stack is aimed at developers. Both have a free plan.
Open-source memory layer that carries lessons across coding agents
Uptime, incident management and logs
| Pricing | Open source | Freemium · $30 |
| Starting price | Not published | $30/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Built for | Developers, Enterprise, Small businesses | Developers |
| Platforms | macos, windows, linux, web | web |
| Country | US | CZ · 2021 |
| Rating | — | — |
Choose beacon.sh if
Developers and engineering teams using several AI coding agents who want shared, reviewed memory and a full record of agent activity.
- MIT-licensed core that runs locally without lock-in to one harness
- One timeline for every agent and machine, including token spend
- Turns repeated walkthroughs into skills every agent can reuse
Look elsewhere if: Teams that only need a shared knowledge store for agents and people, or want to train their own models from traces (Context Engine, Overmind).
Choose Better Stack if
Startups and small engineering teams who want monitoring, incidents and logs without three vendors.
- Polished all-in-one for small and mid teams
- Generous free plan
- Fast checks and reliable alerting
Look elsewhere if: Large enterprises with complex observability needs (Datadog, Grafana Enterprise).
beacon.sh vs Better Stack pricing
beacon.sh
- Open source$0MIT-licensed local endpoint, JSONL traces, local dashboard
- Beacon Cloud$020+ agents, 50 findings, session search over MCP, daily digest
- Cloud Pro$20/moBilled annually (save 25%); unlimited findings, memories over MCP
- Cloud Team$30/seat/moBilled annually plus $10/mo base, up to 20 seats, shared traces
- EnterpriseCustomApproval gates, SSO, RBAC, audit logs, your own bucket and region
Better Stack
- Free$010 monitors and heartbeats, 1 status page, 3 GB logs
- Responder$34/mo$29/mo billed yearly; uptime + telemetry seat
- Telemetry Nano$30/moEU region ($45 US); 40 GB logs/traces/metrics
- Telemetry Micro$120/moEU region ($180 US); 160 GB each
beacon.sh · Key features
- Session capture across Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, OpenCode and 20+ other harnesses
- OpenTelemetry-based event model stored as local JSONL by default
- Reviewed memories and skills served to agents over MCP and Agent Skills
- Cloud findings with one-click skills, fix prompts and an evidence trail
- Full session replay with prompts, commands, edits, approvals and tokens
- Terminal trace browser and read-only local dashboard
Cons
- Pro and Team prices are shown only with annual billing
- Team price is listed as $30 per seat in one place and $40 in the comparison table
- Free cloud tier caps findings at 50
Better Stack · Key features
- Uptime, SSL, DNS and heartbeat monitors with fast intervals
- Incident management with on-call rotations and escalations
- Beautiful hosted status pages
- Log management with SQL and live tail
- Metrics, dashboards and OpenTelemetry support
- Phone, SMS, Slack and Teams alerting
Cons
- Not as deep as Datadog for APM
- Usage pricing on logs needs monitoring
- On-call features simpler than PagerDuty
beacon.sh vs Better Stack: FAQ
Do beacon.sh and Better Stack have a free plan?
Yes, both beacon.sh and Better Stack have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.
Which is better for small businesses, beacon.sh or Better Stack?
beacon.sh lists small businesses as a core audience, while Better Stack is aimed more at developers.