PocketBase vs Better Stack
Open-source backend in a single Go binary
vs. Observability + uptime + incident management in one — modern alternative to Datadog
Pricing tiers
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)
Better Stack
Pay-as-you-go
Ingest $0.15/GB, retention $0.08/GB/month. Metrics $0.75/GB/month.
$0 base (usage-based)
Free
10 monitors + heartbeats, 1 status page. 3GB logs @ 3-day retention. 30GB metrics. 100K exceptions/mo. 5k session replays.
Free
Telemetry — Nano
$30/mo ($25 annual). 40 GB logs/traces/metrics. 30-day retention.
$30/mo
Responder License
$34/mo ($29 annual) per responder. Unlimited phone + SMS alerts. Required for on-call.
$34/mo
Telemetry — Micro
$120/mo. 160 GB.
$120/mo
Telemetry — Mega
$250/mo. 340 GB.
$250/mo
Telemetry — Tera
$500/mo. 700 GB.
$500/mo
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing self-hosted on PocketBase vs free on Better Stack.
| Metric | PocketBase | Better Stack |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
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.
Better Stack · 13 features
- Dashboards — SQL + chart-based dashboards.
- Distributed Tracing — OpenTelemetry traces with span analysis.
- Error Tracking — Sentry-style error capture per $0.000075/exception.
- Heartbeats (Cron) — Dead-man-switch style alerts for cron/scheduled jobs.
- Logs (formerly Logtail) — Centralized structured logging with live tail + SQL.
- Metrics — Prometheus-compatible metrics ingest + visualization.
- On-Call & Incidents — Schedules, escalations, incident response with postmortems.
- Phone + SMS Alerts — Unlimited phone + SMS on Responder license.
- Reporting & Analytics — +$5/member/month add-on.
- Session Replay — Integrated with error events.
- SQL Queries over Logs — ClickHouse-backed SQL on all ingested telemetry.
- Status Pages — Hosted status pages with custom domain + brandable.
- Uptime Monitoring — HTTP, keyword, ping, TCP, UDP monitors. Global checkpoints.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | PocketBase | Better Stack |
|---|---|---|
| SDK | Go API (extend as library), pocketbase (Dart), pocketbase (JS SDK) | logtail-ruby, pino-logtail / winston transport, python-logtail |
| REST | REST API | Better Stack REST API, Telemetry API |
| OTHER | Admin Dashboard, Realtime SSE | OTLP (OpenTelemetry), Webhooks |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to PocketBase and Better Stack are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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