LangSmith vs PocketBase
LLM observability, testing & evaluation — by LangChain
vs. Open-source backend in a single Go binary
Pricing tiers
LangSmith
Developer (Free)
Free forever. 5,000 traces/month. 14-day retention. 1 seat. Basic evaluations.
Free
Plus
$39/seat/month. 10k base traces included ($2.50 per 1k overage). Full evaluations, custom dashboards, email support.
$39/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Self-host option, SSO, custom retention, dedicated support.
Custom
PocketBase
Self-Hosted
MIT-licensed single binary. Run on any VPS / Docker / bare metal. No usage caps — only limited by your server.
$0 base (usage-based)
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing developer on LangSmith vs self-hosted on PocketBase.
| Metric | LangSmith | PocketBase |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
LangSmith · 14 features
- Alerts — Threshold alerts on latency, cost, eval metrics.
- Annotation Queues — Human-review workflows for trace quality rating.
- Custom Dashboards — Aggregate metrics dashboards per project/tag.
- Datasets — Collect examples → use as eval sets or training data.
- Evaluations — LLM-as-judge, embedding similarity, custom Python evaluators, offline batch eval…
- LangChain Integration — Auto-trace any LangChain/LangGraph run with env var.
- LangGraph Integration — First-class trace + eval for LangGraph agents.
- LLM Tracing — Automatic trace every LLM call + tool call + chain step.
- OpenTelemetry Export — Export traces as OTLP to Datadog/Honeycomb/etc.
- Playground — Test prompts + models inline before deploying.
- Prompt Canvas — Visual prompt editor with live test + eval.
- Prompt Hub — Public + private prompt library with versioning.
- Self-Hosted (Enterprise) — Docker + k8s deployment in your infra.
- Threads + Sessions — Group traces into conversational sessions.
PocketBase · 12 features
- Access Rules — Record-level access rules (filter expressions) referencing @request and @collect…
- Admin Dashboard — Built-in web UI for schema + data management.
- Auth — Email+password, OAuth2 (Google, GitHub, Facebook, Apple, Discord, Microsoft, etc…
- Backups — Built-in backup/restore with S3 upload option.
- Built-in Mailer — SMTP integration for verification, password reset, magic link emails.
- Collections — Schema-defined record types with fields, validations, and record/admin/auth acce…
- Embedded JS Engine — JavaScript VM (goja) lets you write hooks in JS without recompiling.
- Extend as Go Library — Embed PocketBase in a larger Go app, add custom routes and events.
- File Storage — Local filesystem or S3-compatible storage with access rules.
- Hooks — Server-side Go or JavaScript hooks that run on CRUD events (OnRecordBeforeCreate…
- Migrations — JS/Go migration scripts applied on startup.
- Realtime Subscriptions — SSE-based subscriptions to collection changes.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | LangSmith | PocketBase |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | LangSmith CLI | — |
| SDK | langsmith-js, langsmith-python | Go API (extend as library), pocketbase (Dart), pocketbase (JS SDK) |
| REST | LangSmith REST API | REST API |
| MCP | LangSmith MCP | — |
| OTHER | LangSmith Dashboard | Admin Dashboard, Realtime SSE |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to LangSmith and PocketBase are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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