LangSmith vs Langtrace
A side-by-side comparison of LangSmith and Langtrace, two Observability tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | LangSmith | Langtrace |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Observability | Observability |
| Pricing | FREEMIUM | FREEMIUM |
| License (differs) | Proprietary | Open core |
| Deployment (differs) | Cloud | Hybrid |
| Platforms (differs) | API, Web | Web, API |
| Model support | Model-agnostic | Model-agnostic |
| Vendor (differs) | LangChain | Scale3 Labs |
The honest brief
LangSmith
Deepest native LangChain/LangGraph tracing — but cloud-only, where Langfuse lets you self-host the same.
- Native LangChain/LangGraph tracing
- Works standalone via SDKs
- Datasets + eval orchestration
- Prompt playground built in
- Closed source, cloud-only
- Self-host is Enterprise-only
- Best value inside LangChain stack
Langtrace
Pure OpenTelemetry spans, so LLM traces export to any OTel backend (Grafana, Datadog) instead of a locked-in dashboard.
- Two-line SDK instrumentation
- Self-hostable / on-prem option
- Tracks token usage, latency, and cost
- Authored by OTel GenAI contributors
- Smaller team and ecosystem
- Fewer features than LangSmith
- Dashboard less polished