Lightstep

Lightstep, now ServiceNow Cloud Observability, is a distributed tracing and observability platform that helps teams monitor, debug, and optimize microservice performance. It provides deep visibility into distributed systems using OpenTelemetry-based tracing, metrics, and service health monitoring.

Lightstep publishes 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include APM, Distributed Tracing, Microservices, Monitoring, and Observability.

Lightstep’s developer surface includes documentation, engineering blog, pricing, signup flow, support, GitHub presence, and 6 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

33.0/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 19/100 agent aware Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-08-05 · rubric v0.9.1

AccessFreemium

1 APIs 16 Features

APMDistributed TracingMicroservicesMonitoringObservabilityOpenTelemetry

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-08-05 · rubric v0.9.1

Composite quality — 33.0/100 · thin

Contract Quality 8.1 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 3.0 / 20

Commercial Clarity 10.5 / 20

Operational Transparency 5.5 / 13

Governance 0.0 / 12

Discoverability 5.9 / 10

Agent readiness — 19/100 · agent aware

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/lightstep: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Lightstep Rate Limits

2 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Lightstep Finops

FINOPS

Features 16

Notable capabilities this provider offers.

Now ServiceNow Cloud Observability after acquisition

Community free for evaluation

Enterprise: custom pricing through ServiceNow

Distributed tracing with intelligent sampling

Service maps (Enterprise)

Anomaly detection with notebooks

OpenTelemetry-native

Public API at api.lightstep.com

Default 600 req/min/org

Span ingest scales with plan

Streams (saved span queries)

Notebooks for collaborative root-cause analysis

ServiceNow ITSM integration (Enterprise)

API tokens per project

Webhooks for streams and conditions

AWS, GCP, Azure cloud support

Scroll for all 16

Get Started 3

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Login

Signup

Signup

OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHub

GitHub

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Support

Support

StatusPage

StatusPage

Commercial 1

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Pricing

Pricing

Company 3

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

LinkedIn

Source (apis.yml)

aid: lightstep
name: Lightstep
description: Lightstep, now ServiceNow Cloud Observability, is a distributed tracing and observability platform that helps
  teams monitor, debug, and optimize microservice performance. It provides deep visibility into distributed systems using
  OpenTelemetry-based tracing, metrics, and service health monitoring.
type: Index
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/lightstep.png
tags:
- APM
- Distributed Tracing
- Microservices
- Monitoring
- Observability
- OpenTelemetry
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/lightstep/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-03-26'
modified: '2026-05-04'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
- aid: lightstep:lightstep-api
  name: Lightstep API
  description: The Lightstep API provides programmatic access to observability data including traces, spans, streams, dashboards,
    alerting conditions, and service health. It enables teams to manage their observability configuration and query telemetry
    data programmatically.
  humanURL: https://docs.lightstep.com/docs/lightstep-api-overview
  tags:
  - APM
  - Distributed Tracing
  - Monitoring
  - Observability
  - Telemetry
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.lightstep.com/docs/lightstep-api-overview
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: https://docs.lightstep.com/openapi
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://docs.lightstep.com/docs/welcome-to-lightstep
  - type: Authentication
    url: https://docs.lightstep.com/docs/create-and-manage-api-keys
common:
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/lightstep-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://lightstep.com
- type: Documentation
  url: https://docs.lightstep.com
- type: Blog
  url: https://lightstep.com/blog
- type: Pricing
  url: https://lightstep.com/pricing
- type: Login
  url: https://app.lightstep.com
- type: Signup
  url: https://app.lightstep.com/signup
- type: Support
  url: https://lightstep.com/support
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/lightstep
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lightstep
- type: StatusPage
  url: https://status.lightstep.com
- type: OpenTelemetry
  url: https://docs.lightstep.com/docs/opentelemetry
- type: Features
  data:
  - Now ServiceNow Cloud Observability after acquisition
  - Community free for evaluation
  - 'Enterprise: custom pricing through ServiceNow'
  - Distributed tracing with intelligent sampling
  - Service maps (Enterprise)
  - Anomaly detection with notebooks
  - OpenTelemetry-native
  - Public API at api.lightstep.com
  - Default 600 req/min/org
  - Span ingest scales with plan
  - Streams (saved span queries)
  - Notebooks for collaborative root-cause analysis
  - ServiceNow ITSM integration (Enterprise)
  - API tokens per project
  - Webhooks for streams and conditions
  - AWS, GCP, Azure cloud support
  sources:
  - https://lightstep.com/
  - https://www.servicenow.com/products/observability.html
  updated: '2026-05-04'
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com