● Beta — KubeEra is in active development. Profiles are live; AI-perception measurement is rolling out.
KubeEra
C

Coroot

Observability
Open source · Apache-2.0

Coroot is an open-source observability platform built around eBPF-based auto-instrumentation.

updated 2026-07-01

What it is

Coroot is an open-source observability platform built around eBPF-based auto-instrumentation. Instead of requiring you to add SDKs or manually configure tracing/metrics collection in every service, it deploys node-agents that use eBPF to capture network traffic, latency, and service dependencies directly from the kernel. It correlates this with metrics, logs, and traces to build a live service map and flag anomalies — the pitch is "observability without instrumentation." It ships as a single Go binary plus agents, runs on Kubernetes (and can watch non-k8s workloads), and stores data in ClickHouse/Prometheus-compatible backends.

Who builds it and why

Coroot is developed by a small commercial open-source company (Coroot, Inc.) that sells a managed/enterprise version on top of the OSS core. The founding motivation, based on public project material, is frustration with the cost and integration overhead of traditional APM stacks (Datadog, New Relic) — particularly the need to instrument every service individually and the resulting bill. eBPF lets them get dependency maps, latency data, and basic RED metrics with zero code changes. Founding date and team size beyond GitHub contributors: not publicly available.

Production readiness signal

  • 7,803 GitHub stars, 34 contributors — a real but small community relative to CNCF-anchor projects (Prometheus, OpenTelemetry).
  • Active development: latest tagged release v1.23.2, most recent commit dated 2026-06-30, suggesting the project is still being pushed forward regularly.
  • Apache-2.0 license, written in Go — standard, low-friction licensing and a language ecosystem well-suited to k8s tooling.
  • Not a CNCF project (sandbox/incubating/graduated status: not publicly available), so it doesn't carry the governance and vendor-neutrality guarantees that come with CNCF membership.
  • 34 contributors for a project this scope (eBPF agents + backend + UI) means bus-factor risk is real — check commit distribution before betting critical infra observability on it.

Who should use this

  • Platform teams running Kubernetes who want dependency maps and latency/error visibility fast, without rolling out OpenTelemetry SDKs across dozens of services.
  • Teams that are cost-sensitive and want to self-host observability instead of paying per-host/per-GB SaaS pricing.
  • Organizations where engineers don't control application code (e.g., platform/SRE teams supporting many dev teams) and can't mandate instrumentation everywhere.
  • Anyone wanting a fast "what talks to what and how slow is it" view during incident response or architecture discovery.

Who should NOT use this

  • Teams needing deep, business-logic-level tracing (span attributes tied to application semantics) — eBPF gives you network/syscall-level insight, not custom span data your app emits.
  • Non-Linux workloads — eBPF is Linux-kernel-specific; Windows nodes or non-Linux runtimes aren't a fit.
  • Shops already heavily invested in OpenTelemetry with custom instrumentation and mature Grafana/Tempo/Loki pipelines — you'd be adding a second observability paradigm rather than replacing one.
  • Enterprises requiring vendor-neutral, CNCF-graduated tooling for compliance/procurement reasons — Coroot isn't there (status not publicly available, but no evidence of CNCF standing).
  • Teams needing guaranteed long-term support/SLAs without paying — the OSS project has a small contributor base, so if it stalls, you're on your own or migrating.

Alternatives

  • Pixie (Cloud Native Computing Foundation sandbox) — similar eBPF-based, no-instrumentation approach for Kubernetes, more entrenched CNCF backing.
  • Grafana stack (Tempo + Mimir + Loki + Beyla for eBPF) — more modular, larger ecosystem, requires more assembly but broader community support.
  • Datadog / New Relic — commercial SaaS APM with mature UX and support, but per-host pricing and standard code-based instrumentation.

Pricing

The core Coroot project is fully open source under Apache-2.0 — self-host it for free. The company offers a paid managed/enterprise tier (hosted version, extended retention, support) on top; exact pricing is not publicly available.

Frequently asked

What is Coroot?+
Coroot is an open-source observability platform built around eBPF-based auto-instrumentation.
Who builds Coroot?+
Coroot is developed by a small commercial open-source company (Coroot, Inc.) that sells a managed/enterprise version on top of the OSS core.
Is Coroot production ready?+
7,803 GitHub stars, 34 contributors — a real but small community relative to CNCF-anchor projects (Prometheus, OpenTelemetry). Active development: latest tagged release v1.23.2, most recent commit dated 2026-06-30, suggesting the project is still being pushed forward regularly. Apache-2.
Who should use Coroot?+
Platform teams running Kubernetes who want dependency maps and latency/error visibility fast, without rolling out OpenTelemetry SDKs across dozens of services. Teams that are cost-sensitive and want to self-host observability instead of paying per-host/per-GB SaaS pricing.
Who should not use Coroot?+
Teams needing deep, business-logic-level tracing (span attributes tied to application semantics) — eBPF gives you network/syscall-level insight, not custom span data your app emits. Non-Linux workloads — eBPF is Linux-kernel-specific; Windows nodes or non-Linux runtimes aren't a fit.
What are the alternatives to Coroot?+
Pixie (Cloud Native Computing Foundation sandbox) — similar eBPF-based, no-instrumentation approach for Kubernetes, more entrenched CNCF backing. Grafana stack (Tempo + Mimir + Loki + Beyla for eBPF) — more modular, larger ecosystem, requires more assembly but broader community support.
How much does Coroot cost?+
The core Coroot project is fully open source under Apache-2.0 — self-host it for free. The company offers a paid managed/enterprise tier (hosted version, extended retention, support) on top; exact pricing is not publicly available.