Honeycomb
- Free allowance
- Free, 'free forever': up to 20M events per month and up to 100M metrics data points per month, 2 triggers, distributed tracing, BubbleUp, OpenTelemetry support, Honeycomb MCP; no credit card required
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- volume-quota20M events per month (each span is one event) and 100M metrics data points per month; 2 triggers
- Evidence
- documented34 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-03checked 2026-11-02 (live); stale on 2026-12-03
| Free tier | Free, 'free forever': up to 20M events per month and up to 100M metrics data points per month, 2 triggers, distributed tracing, BubbleUp, OpenTelemetry support, Honeycomb MCP; no credit card required unit mixed; metered on object-count; The allowance counts events and metrics data points, which no single unit of the vocabulary names. Each span of a trace counts as one event, so a trace of 150 spans is 150 events. Pro starts at USD 150 per month for up to 750M events. |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits | |
| Binding | volume-quota Each span is one event, so a trace of 150 spans uses 150 of the 20M a month; the monthly event count binds before the 2000 events-per-second rate or the 60-day retention. |
| Identity | email Sign-up takes an e-mail address or a Google account, activated by a link sent to the e-mail, then a team name, a role and how the user heard of Honeycomb; the sign-up page states no credit card is required. The data region (US or EU) is chosen at sign-up. Whether a later step asks for a phone number is unverified: behind a sign-up. |
| Egress | unverified: no egress term on the pages read; the Query Data API is listed among Enterprise features |
| Per-object cap | An event may have 2,000 fields and must be less than 1 MB of uncompressed JSON, and a string field is at most 64KB; the single-event endpoint limits its request body to 1MB raw (potentially compressed) |
| Retention | Events and logs: 60-day fixed retention. Time-series metrics datasets: 13-month fixed retention by default. (60 days) |
| Interface | rest Events and management API under /1/ and /2/ at https://api.honeycomb.io (US) or https://api.eu1.honeycomb.io (EU), keyed by API keys, plus OTLP ingest at the same hosts over gRPC, HTTP/protobuf and HTTP/JSON. A hosted MCP server at https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp (US) or https://mcp.eu1.honeycomb.io/mcp (EU) authenticates with OAuth or an API key and is available on every plan, including free. The Query Data API is listed among Enterprise features. api.honeycomb.io answered 401 to /1/auth without a key. endpoint: https://api.honeycomb.io |
| Tooling | OpenTelemetry SDKs and collectors, the Honeycomb MCP server, and any HTTP client with an API key |
| Composes with | A trace and event store for free compute services instrumented with OpenTelemetry, 20M spans or events a month kept 60 days. |
| Reliability | A team over its monthly event limit for a second consecutive month is warned, and after 10 days the Event API accepts one event in ten and rejects the rest. |
| Notes | The free plan counts events, not bytes, and keeps them 60 days, the longest event retention of the free observability tiers at Better Stack (3 days), Axiom (30 days) and New Relic (at least 8 days). |
| Evidence note | documented Every limit is quoted from a first-party page, and the API host answered 401 without a key. No account was opened; an authenticated event send from a free team would move it to measured. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 34
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-30 | www.honeycomb.io/pricing | Free allows up to 20M events and 100M metrics data points a month |
| 2026-10-30 | www.honeycomb.io/pricing | the free plan has no end date |
| 2026-10-30 | www.honeycomb.io/pricing | Free includes 2 triggers |
| 2026-10-30 | www.honeycomb.io/pricing | Free includes OpenTelemetry support |
| 2026-10-30 | www.honeycomb.io/pricing | Free includes the Honeycomb MCP server |
| 2026-10-30 | www.honeycomb.io/pricing | Pro starts at USD 150 per month |
| 2026-10-30 | www.honeycomb.io/pricing | Pro allows up to 750M events a month |
| 2026-10-30 | www.honeycomb.io/pricing | the Query Data API is in the Enterprise feature list |
| 2026-10-30 | ui.honeycomb.io/signup | the sign-up page states no credit card is required |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.honeycomb.io/get-started/create-account | sign-up takes an e-mail address or a Google account |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.honeycomb.io/get-started/create-account | the account is activated by an e-mailed link |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.honeycomb.io/get-started/create-account | the team step asks for a team name, a role and a referral answer |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.honeycomb.io/get-started/manage-costs/how-honeycomb-cal | events and logs are kept 60 days |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.honeycomb.io/get-started/manage-costs/how-honeycomb-cal | metrics datasets are kept 13 months by default |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.honeycomb.io/get-started/manage-costs/how-honeycomb-cal | each span of a trace counts as one event |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.honeycomb.io/get-started/manage-costs/how-honeycomb-cal | a team over its limit a second month is warned and has 10 days to correct it |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.honeycomb.io/get-started/manage-costs/how-honeycomb-cal | throttling keeps one event in ten |
| 2026-10-30 | support.honeycomb.io/articles/2222640834-what-are-honeycomb- | the free tier is limited to 2000 events per second |
| 2026-10-30 | support.honeycomb.io/articles/2222640834-what-are-honeycomb- | traffic over the rate limit gets HTTP 429 |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.honeycomb.io/api/ | the US API base URL |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.honeycomb.io/api/ | the EU API base URL |
| 2026-10-31 | probe: https://api.honeycomb.io/1/auth | the API host answers 401 without a key |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.honeycomb.io/api/events/create-an-event | an event has at most 2,000 fields and must be under 1 MB of uncompressed JSON |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.honeycomb.io/api/events/create-an-event | a string field is at most 64KB |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.honeycomb.io/send-data/opentelemetry/collector | a request sent to Honeycomb through the OpenTelemetry Collector is limited to 15MB |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.honeycomb.io/send-data/opentelemetry | Honeycomb accepts OTLP over gRPC, HTTP/protobuf and HTTP/JSON |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.honeycomb.io/api/events/create-an-event | the single-event endpoint limits its request body to 1MB raw (potentially compressed) |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.honeycomb.io/api/events/create-events | one batch request carries one or more events, so the event count is not a request count |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.honeycomb.io/send-data/opentelemetry | the OTLP endpoint of the US region is api.honeycomb.io |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.honeycomb.io/send-data/opentelemetry | the OTLP endpoint of the EU region is api.eu1.honeycomb.io |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.honeycomb.io/integrations/mcp/configuration-guide | the US MCP server is at https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp and authenticates with OAuth |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.honeycomb.io/integrations/mcp/configuration-guide | the EU MCP server is at https://mcp.eu1.honeycomb.io/mcp and authenticates with OAuth |
| 2026-11-01 | docs.honeycomb.io/integrations/mcp/configuration-guide | the MCP server can also authenticate with an API key |
| 2026-11-01 | www.honeycomb.io/blog/hosted-mcp-now-available | the hosted MCP server is available on every Honeycomb plan, including free, at no charge |