avuru obs vs. Coroot
Coroot is the closest peer to avuru obs, and a genuinely good tool. Both are eBPF-based, both store telemetry in ClickHouse, both are self-hosted and open source, and both give you a zero-instrumentation service map within minutes of installing. If you like Coroot, you'll recognize a lot here.
The differences are narrower than with the other tools in this section, and they're mostly about emphasis: how storage is laid out, how you choose which signals to run, and whether error tracking is a first-class signal or something you infer from logs and traces.
At a glance
| Coroot | avuru obs | |
|---|---|---|
| Zero-code instrumentation | eBPF node-agent | eBPF sensor (OBI) |
| Service map in minutes | Yes | Yes |
| Signals | Metrics, logs, traces, profiling, SLO alerting | Traces, RED + infra metrics, logs, profiling, error tracking, service health + alerting |
| Storage | Prometheus-compatible TSDB for metrics + ClickHouse for logs/traces/profiles (metrics can move into ClickHouse) | Single ClickHouse for every signal |
| Error tracking | Inferred from traces & logs | First-class module with Sentry-SDK ingest |
| Choosing signals | Predefined set | Module framework — turn signal families on/off |
| Ingest | OTLP + node-agent | Native OTLP (:4318/:4317) + eBPF |
| Root-cause analysis | AI-powered RCA + predefined inspections | Correlated queries (no AI RCA yet) |
| Deploy | node-agent + cluster-agent + store | One Helm chart |
| License | Apache-2.0 (Community); commercial Enterprise edition | AGPL-3.0 |
Why teams choose avuru obs
- Error tracking as its own module. Coroot surfaces failures through traces, logs and SLO alerts. avuru obs adds a dedicated error-tracking module that accepts events straight from Sentry SDKs — so exceptions are grouped as first-class issues alongside the traces and logs that explain them, without running a separate Sentry or GlitchTip.
- One store, not two. Coroot's default topology pairs a Prometheus-compatible time-series database with ClickHouse (you can consolidate metrics into ClickHouse). avuru obs keeps every signal in one ClickHouse from the start, so there's a single store to size, back up and correlate across. See Architecture.
- Pick your signals. A module framework lets you run only what you need — traces + map only, or add logs, infra metrics and profiling. Turning a module off skips its schema, API, collection and UI, so a lean install stays lean.
- Health and alerting in the box. Service health rolls RED into group status with criticality tiers and dependency propagation — a service can't read green while a critical dependency is red — and alerting fires a webhook (Slack, PagerDuty, Alertmanager) when a target goes down and when it recovers.
:::note Honest status The error-tracking module (with Sentry-SDK ingest), service health and alerting shipped in the v0.2 line; the ingest port stays opt-in. Track what's live on Feature status and the Changelog. :::
How to run them side by side
Both tools speak OTLP and both reconstruct topology from eBPF, so you can evaluate avuru obs without disturbing Coroot:
- Install avuru obs alongside Coroot (
helm install). - Point your OTLP exporters (or your OTel Collector) at the avuru
gatewayon:4318/:4317, keeping your existing pipeline so both receive data. - Compare the two zero-instrumentation maps against the same traffic, then decide per environment.
See the OTLP bridge guide for exporter settings.
When Coroot is the better fit
- You want AI-powered root-cause analysis and predefined inspections today — avuru obs correlates signals with queries but doesn't do automated RCA yet.
- You rely on burn-rate SLO alerting and Coroot's out-of-the-box dashboards — avuru obs alerts on sustained health-status transitions today, not error-budget burn.
- You already operate a Prometheus-compatible metrics backend and want your metrics to stay there.
- You need Coroot's cluster-agent database dashboards or its commercial Enterprise support.
:::tip Try it side by side Install in 30 seconds and dual-export one service — you'll get the same zero-code map you know from Coroot, in one ClickHouse. :::