OpenLIT review

OpenLIT is an open-source, OpenTelemetry-native platform for monitoring AI applications. It brings LLM tracing, evaluations, prompt management, guardrails, agent monitoring, and cost and GPU metrics into one self-hosted product. The stated goal is broader than recording model calls: teams can trace tools and retrieval, review production traffic or experiments, manage prompt versions, and monitor agent outcomes.

OpenLIT can also export telemetry to other OpenTelemetry backends, so using its instrumentation does not require keeping all the resulting data in OpenLIT’s interface. That makes it relevant to teams already using OTel-compatible tools, as well as those building their own observability stack. Its feature list includes NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel GPU monitoring, plus an API key vault for storing secrets outside application code.

The main trade-off is operational: the free OSS plan is self-hosted. OpenLIT lists a hosted Cloud option as “Coming soon,” with pricing to be shared at launch.

OpenLIT’s clearest advantage is the combination of AI-specific monitoring and OpenTelemetry compatibility. Its feature set covers traces for LLM calls, tools, and retrieval, with filters for user, session, cost, latency, and metadata. Teams can evaluate production traffic or experiments using LLM judges, heuristics, or human review, and manage prompt versions without shipping application code for each change.

The breadth extends beyond text-generation traces. OpenLIT lists agent tool and outcome monitoring, including tool loops; an API key vault; and GPU utilization, memory, temperature, and power metrics for NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel hardware. That can make it a candidate for teams monitoring self-hosted models alongside application behavior, rather than only API usage.

The pricing listing puts OSS at $0 per month under Apache 2.0, with unlimited self-hosted usage and no per-trace fee. That is a meaningful cost advantage for teams willing to run the service themselves. A Reddit maintainer also described OpenLIT telemetry as usable in other OTel-native tools, including Grafana and Datadog. That reduces the risk of treating OpenLIT as the only destination for the data.

Free does not mean managed. The OSS plan is for teams self-hosting OpenLIT, and the pricing information does not publish a hosted Cloud price or launch date; Cloud is listed as “Coming soon.” Enterprise pricing is also not published: it is licensed per organisation and listed as “Contact us.” There is no published annual price, paid-plan billing detail, or per-organisation fee to compare against alternatives.

The published plan details do not state specific user, retention, or ingestion caps. OSS is described as unlimited self-hosted usage with no per-trace fee, but teams still need to account for their own hosting and maintenance; the pricing listing gives no managed-service alternative with a disclosed cost.

There are also signs that integration and visibility may need attention. In an older Reddit exchange, a user asked about collected variables and the maintainer said documentation was missing; another user reported being unable to get data into OpenLIT. In a separate exchange, the maintainer said logs were not supported at that time, though exceptions could be inspected in ClickHouse. These are historical reports, not confirmation of current limitations, but they are reasons to verify the present docs and integrations before switching.

OpenLIT’s OSS plan is $0 per month under Apache 2.0, with unlimited self-hosted usage and no per-trace fee, according to the pricing information checked on November 6, 2026. There is no published paid tier price to compare it with.

Enterprise is licensed per organisation, but the price is “Contact us.” The Cloud plan is marked “Coming soon,” with pricing to be shared at launch. That leaves a sizeable pricing gap: self-hosting has a listed price of zero, while the cost of a licensed or hosted option is not published. We can’t calculate a jump between tiers until OpenLIT publishes those prices.

The pricing page information does not list add-ons, annual rates, or paid-plan billing terms. The $0 figure is for OSS, not a quote for hosting, deployment, or operating the software yourself. If you need a managed service or a firm enterprise budget, get pricing directly before planning a switch.

The main switching decision is operational: OpenLIT’s listed free plan is self-hosted, so teams need to be willing to run it themselves. The published product information says telemetry can be exported to other OpenTelemetry backends, which gives teams an exit route for telemetry rather than requiring them to keep all observability data in OpenLIT. It does not specify export limits or migration steps.

A move will still mean assessing your existing instrumentation and how it maps to OpenLIT’s tracing, evaluations, prompts, and monitoring. Treat the work as a deployment and integration project; the available material does not give a migration guide or estimate.

We can’t reliably say what makes users leave based on Reddit: no Reddit posts or comments were included in the published material. The clearest reasons to hesitate in the published information are the need to self-host, no hosted service available yet, and unpublished Enterprise pricing. Teams that need managed hosting or budget certainty may want to wait.