# Last9 vs Chronosphere: A Chronosphere Alternative in Your Cloud

> Last9 vs Chronosphere compared on AI and MCP, where the AI runs, pricing, metric cardinality, ingest-time control, deployment in your own cloud account, query languages, and telemetry pipelines, with where each one fits.

Source: https://last9.io/compare/chronosphere/

Both shape telemetry before it is stored, and both have an AI SRE agent and an MCP server. Last9 runs inside your own cloud account on one licence, with a generally available agent on your model provider. Cortex XCOR (formerly Chronosphere) runs a dedicated tenant in Palo Alto Networks' cloud.

- **Gartner Cool Vendor 2025:** Named a Gartner® Cool Vendor in AI for SRE and Observability, cited for its unified telemetry platform.
- **Your model, your cloud:** The Last9 agent runs on your model provider, with no per-investigation charge, in your own cloud account.
- **One licence:** No separate meters for data shaped and data kept, and no charge per label or metric name. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill.

## Last9 vs Chronosphere at a glance

The questions engineering teams ask when they compare the two.

| | **Last9** | **Chronosphere** |
|---|---|---|
| Does it have an MCP server for coding agents? | ✓ Yes, hosted, since March 2025, for any MCP client. An agent can act through it: add drop rules and edit dashboards | Yes, open source and hosted, since November 2025. Read-only by default |
| Does it have an AI SRE agent? | ✓ Yes, generally available. The Last9 agent investigates in the app, in Slack, and in your IDE, and builds a diagnosis dashboard from what it finds | In Early Access: AI Investigations and the Operator chat. Not available to every tenant |
| Can the AI use our model provider, in our own cloud? | ✓ Yes. The Last9 agent runs on your model provider or inference endpoint, inside your own cloud account, with no per-investigation charge | No published option. The AI runs in the vendor-hosted tenant |
| How is it priced? | ✓ One licence. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill, at your negotiated rates | Credits, through sales. Data shaped and data kept bill on separate meters |
| How much metric cardinality can I keep? | ✓ No hard limit. 20M series per metric per day by default, raised on request, with no sampling and no charge per label or metric name | No published limit. Each persisted series adds to the bill |
| Can I filter telemetry before I pay to store it? | ✓ Yes, for metrics, logs, and traces, with no code to write. Drop, remap, redact, forward, and aggregate them at ingest, from the UI or Terraform | ✓ Yes, for all three signals. Shaped data bills on the Control meter |
| Can it run in our own cloud account? | ✓ Yes. Last9 runs in your own cloud account, on AWS or GCP in any region, and manages it for you, including the AI | No. A dedicated single-tenant deployment in Palo Alto Networks' cloud |
| Which query languages does it use? | ✓ PromQL and LogQL, or none: build log queries in the query builder, or ask in plain English | PromQL for metrics and its own log syntax. Edit with AI writes queries from plain English |
| Can it route telemetry to our other tools? | Logs, to your own S3 bucket. The Control Plane forwards matching logs there at ingest | ✓ Yes, with the standalone Telemetry Pipeline: all three signals, to Splunk, Datadog, S3, Kafka, and more |

## AI on your model, in your cloud

- **Last9:** One assistant in the app, in Slack, and in your IDE through MCP. It investigates, builds a diagnosis dashboard, and hands you the link.
- **Last9:** The production agent, Last9, responds to pages with context from Slack, Linear, and PagerDuty. It runs on your model provider or inference endpoint and picks the model for each step. Customer data is never used for training.
- **Last9:** Through MCP, an agent adds a drop rule and stops ingesting the noisy source it found.
- **Last9:** Click a point on a chart, a table row, an alert, or an exception, and choose Ask Last9 AI. The investigation starts from that value, in its service context.
- **Chronosphere:** XCOR Operator, an agentic chat, and AI Investigations, an AI SRE agent that starts when an alert fires, are in Early Access, with no published option for your own model provider. The MCP server is read-only by default.

## One licence, every label, and the same control at ingest

- **Last9:** One licence covers distributed tracing, profiling, custom metrics, custom dashboards, alerting, RBAC, and forward deployed engineers. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill, at your negotiated rates.
- **Last9:** Labels like customer_id or tenant stay on the metric, with no charge per label or metric name.
- **Last9:** Drop, remap, redact, forward, and aggregate metrics, logs, and traces at ingest, from the UI or as code with the Terraform provider. Every rule is previewed against live data before you save it.
- **Chronosphere:** The Control Plane shapes all three signals, with partitions and budgets that attribute cost to teams. Data it shapes bills on the Control meter, and data it keeps on the Persistence meter, per persisted series.
- **Matters most for:** Teams whose per-customer or per-tenant labels grow faster than their budget.

## Your cloud account, and anyone can query it

- **Last9:** Last9 runs single-tenant in your own cloud account, on AWS or GCP in any region, and manages it for you, including the AI. Last9 sizes the cluster, tunes it, and runs the upgrades.
- **Last9:** PromQL and LogQL natively, with a builder and plain-English Ask Mode for anyone who does not write queries. Your own Grafana can also query Last9 metrics as a Prometheus data source.
- **Last9:** Support is a shared channel in Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat, with forward deployed engineers who know your setup.
- **Chronosphere:** Each customer gets a dedicated single-tenant deployment with a 99.9% uptime SLA, run by Palo Alto Networks in its own cloud. Metrics answer PromQL, also from Grafana as a Prometheus data source, and logs use Chronosphere's own query syntax.

## Which one fits your team?

**Choose Last9 if:**
- You want the whole platform, including the AI, running in your own cloud account
- You want a generally available AI agent on your own model provider, with no charge per investigation
- You want an agent that can add drop rules through MCP
- You want one licence instead of separate meters for data shaped and data kept
- You want a ready-made view of what Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, and Codex do and cost

**Choose Chronosphere if:**
- You run Palo Alto Networks security tools and want observability from the same vendor
- You want a standalone telemetry pipeline that routes data to Splunk, Datadog, Cortex XSIAM, and other backends
- You want partitions and budgets that attribute observability cost to individual teams
- You want a vendor-run platform with a published 99.9% uptime SLA

## Moving off Chronosphere

What the switch involves, and what Last9 does for you.

- **Forward deployed engineers:** A Last9 engineer runs the move with your team.
- **Keep your instrumentation:** Chronosphere takes OpenTelemetry over OTLP and Prometheus metrics, and so does Last9. Services already on OpenTelemetry or Prometheus need only a new endpoint.
- **Queries without its log syntax:** PromQL chart queries carry over. A Last9 engineer moves your dashboards and alerts with your team, rewrites Chronosphere log queries in PromQL or LogQL, and re-creates your shaping rules as Control Plane rules. Anyone who does not write queries uses the builder or plain-English Ask Mode.
- **Run both:** Keep the Telemetry Pipeline in front if you use it. The OpenTelemetry Collector can send the same data to both platforms while you compare them on your own incidents.

## The objections we hear most

Each one is a fair reason to hesitate.

### Chronosphere already shapes telemetry before it is stored.

Both do, for all three signals, and Chronosphere was built on the idea. Chronosphere bills shaped data on a Control meter and kept data on a Persistence meter, with metrics billed per persisted series. Last9 is one licence, with no charge per label or metric name, and through MCP an agent can add the drop rule itself.

### Chronosphere already has an AI SRE agent and an MCP server.

Its AI Investigations and Operator are in Early Access, run inside the vendor-hosted tenant, and publish no option for your own model provider. Its MCP server is read-only by default. The Last9 agent is generally available and runs on your model provider in your own cloud account, with no per-investigation charge, and through MCP an agent adds drop rules and edits dashboards.

### Chronosphere gives us a dedicated single-tenant deployment.

That deployment runs in Palo Alto Networks' cloud, with a 99.9% uptime SLA. Last9 runs single-tenant in your own cloud account, on AWS or GCP in any region, and Last9 manages it for you, including the AI.

### Chronosphere support answers fast, in our own Slack channel.

Last9 support is a shared channel too, in Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat, with forward deployed engineers who know your setup and run the move with your team.

### We run Palo Alto Networks security tools, and the Telemetry Pipeline feeds Cortex XSIAM.

Keep it. The Telemetry Pipeline is sold on its own, so it can keep feeding XSIAM while your observability data goes to Last9 over OpenTelemetry.

### Chronosphere scales to billions of active time series. Is Last9 proven at our scale?

Last9 regularly handles 500M+ events a minute and 60M+ concurrent users, and has monitored 12 of the world's 20 largest streaming events. It is SOC 2 Type II certified and PCI ready, with SSO and access controls. Teams across fintech, healthcare, gaming, media, and commerce run it in production, including Replit, Pine Labs, Tata 1mg, and Housing.com.

## FAQ

### Is Last9 a good Chronosphere alternative?

Chronosphere fits large teams that want a vendor-run dedicated tenant, partitions and budgets that attribute cost to teams, and a standalone telemetry pipeline in front of other backends. Last9 fits teams that want the platform in their own cloud account on one licence, a generally available AI agent on their own model provider, and an MCP server that can add drop rules.

### How does Last9's MCP server compare with the Chronosphere MCP server?

The Chronosphere MCP server is open source and hosted, generally available since November 2025, and read-only by default. Last9's MCP server is hosted, since March 2025, and lets an agent add drop rules and edit dashboards, so it can change what is ingested.

### How does Last9's AI compare with Chronosphere AI?

Chronosphere AI is now XCOR Operator and AI Investigations, both in Early Access, inside the vendor-hosted tenant, with no published option for your own model provider. The Last9 agent is generally available, runs on your model provider inside your own cloud account, and has no per-query or per-investigation charge.

### How does Last9 billing compare with Chronosphere pricing?

Chronosphere pricing is credit-based and sold through a sales conversation, with separate meters for data shaped and data kept, and metrics billed by persisted series, datapoints, and resolution. Last9 is one licence that covers tracing, profiling, custom metrics, dashboards, alerting, RBAC, and forward deployed engineers, with the infrastructure on your own cloud bill.

### How does Last9 compare with Chronosphere high cardinality metrics?

Chronosphere publishes no series limit and bills metrics per persisted series and datapoint, so each new series adds to the bill. Last9 has no hard limit on metric cardinality: 20M series per metric per day by default, raised on request, with no sampling and no charge per label or metric name.

### How does Last9 work with Chronosphere telemetry pipelines?

Chronosphere telemetry pipelines, now the Palo Alto Networks Telemetry Pipeline, are a standalone product that routes logs, metrics, and traces to backends such as Splunk, Datadog, Amazon S3, Kafka, and Cortex XSIAM. Last9 forwards logs to your own S3 bucket at ingest, and teams can keep the pipeline in front while their observability data goes to Last9.

### Is there a Chronosphere alternative that runs in our cloud account?

Chronosphere gives each customer a dedicated single-tenant deployment with a 99.9% uptime SLA, in Palo Alto Networks' cloud, with no option to run it in yours. Last9 runs single-tenant in your own cloud account, on AWS or GCP in any region, and Last9 manages it for you, including the AI.

### Can Last9 replace Chronosphere APM?

Chronosphere builds APM on open-source telemetry, and Cortex XCOR now adds RUM and synthetics. Last9 covers service discovery, dependency maps, database and external calls, Apdex, exceptions, and trace correlation, from OpenTelemetry, on the one licence.

### Can Last9 run alongside Chronosphere?

Yes. Both take OpenTelemetry over OTLP, so the OpenTelemetry Collector can send the same data to both. Teams can keep the Telemetry Pipeline in front, and a Last9 engineer plans the split with your team.

### How do I migrate from Chronosphere to Last9?

Chronosphere takes OpenTelemetry and Prometheus metrics, so services already sending them need only a new endpoint, and PromQL chart queries carry over. A Last9 engineer moves your dashboards and alerts with your team, rewrites Chronosphere log queries in PromQL or LogQL, and re-creates your shaping rules as Control Plane rules.