Why engineering teams choose Last9 vs CubeAPM
Both run inside your own cloud account. Last9 adds an AI agent on your model provider, a hosted MCP server an agent can write through, and mobile RUM, on one licence. CubeAPM bills per GB and puts distributed tracing and custom dashboards on its Enterprise plan.
100+ native integrations, OpenTelemetry-first. A Last9 engineer runs the move with your team.
Named a Gartner® Cool Vendor in AI for SRE and Observability, cited for its unified telemetry platform.
The Last9 agent runs on your model provider, with no per-investigation charge, in your own cloud account.
Distributed tracing, profiling, custom dashboards, RBAC, and forward deployed engineers on one licence. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill.
At a glance
Last9 vs CubeAPM at a glance
The questions engineering teams ask when they compare the two.
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, since January 2026, on your own CubeAPM instance. Its tools can only query logs, metrics, and traces
Does it have an AI SRE agent?
Yes. The Last9 agent investigates in the app, in Slack, and in your IDE, on your model provider, with no per-investigation charge
No. CubeAPM uses AI to sample traces and index logs, and has no agent that investigates an incident
How is it priced?
One licence. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill, at your negotiated rates
Per GB ingested on the Pro plan, or a custom annual price on Enterprise. Users are free, and the infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill
Which features need a higher plan?
None. One licence covers distributed tracing, profiling, custom metrics, custom dashboards, alerting, RBAC, and forward deployed engineers
Distributed tracing, the profiler, runtime metrics, custom metrics, custom dashboards, rich alerting, RBAC, unlimited retention, and an account rep need Enterprise. Pro keeps data for 15 days
Is trace data sampled?
No. Every trace is kept. You decide what to drop or aggregate, with rules you preview against live data
Yes. Smart Sampling decides which traces to keep, from latency, errors, and other context. The only documented setting is how many error traces to keep per service, API, and error type
Does it cover mobile apps?
Yes. RUM SDKs for Android, iOS, React Native, and Flutter, plus the web, next to your backend telemetry
Browser RUM only. CubeAPM's docs have no Android, iOS, React Native, or Flutter SDK
Can it monitor LLM apps and coding agents?
Yes. Agents Monitoring reports conversations, tokens, cost, latency, and success rate from OpenTelemetry GenAI telemetry, with a view for coding agents
No. CubeAPM documents no view of LLM tokens, cost, or models
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
Yes. CubeAPM deploys in your own account on AWS, Azure, or GCP, or on-prem, and its team handles upgrades
What about our APM agents and integrations?
100+ integrations, plus anything with OpenTelemetry or Prometheus. The Datadog Agent can dual-ship metrics and traces to Last9
CubeAPM also takes data from Datadog tracers, New Relic agents, and Elastic APM agents on their own protocols, so those services keep their instrumentation
| Capability | Last9 | CubeAPM |
|---|---|---|
| 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, since January 2026, on your own CubeAPM instance. Its tools can only query logs, metrics, and traces |
| Does it have an AI SRE agent? | Yes. The Last9 agent investigates in the app, in Slack, and in your IDE, on your model provider, with no per-investigation charge | No. CubeAPM uses AI to sample traces and index logs, and has no agent that investigates an incident |
| How is it priced? | One licence. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill, at your negotiated rates | Per GB ingested on the Pro plan, or a custom annual price on Enterprise. Users are free, and the infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill |
| Which features need a higher plan? | None. One licence covers distributed tracing, profiling, custom metrics, custom dashboards, alerting, RBAC, and forward deployed engineers | Distributed tracing, the profiler, runtime metrics, custom metrics, custom dashboards, rich alerting, RBAC, unlimited retention, and an account rep need Enterprise. Pro keeps data for 15 days |
| Is trace data sampled? | No. Every trace is kept. You decide what to drop or aggregate, with rules you preview against live data | Yes. Smart Sampling decides which traces to keep, from latency, errors, and other context. The only documented setting is how many error traces to keep per service, API, and error type |
| Does it cover mobile apps? | Yes. RUM SDKs for Android, iOS, React Native, and Flutter, plus the web, next to your backend telemetry | Browser RUM only. CubeAPM's docs have no Android, iOS, React Native, or Flutter SDK |
| Can it monitor LLM apps and coding agents? | Yes. Agents Monitoring reports conversations, tokens, cost, latency, and success rate from OpenTelemetry GenAI telemetry, with a view for coding agents | No. CubeAPM documents no view of LLM tokens, cost, or models |
| 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 | Yes. CubeAPM deploys in your own account on AWS, Azure, or GCP, or on-prem, and its team handles upgrades |
| What about our APM agents and integrations? | 100+ integrations, plus anything with OpenTelemetry or Prometheus. The Datadog Agent can dual-ship metrics and traces to Last9 | CubeAPM also takes data from Datadog tracers, New Relic agents, and Elastic APM agents on their own protocols, so those services keep their instrumentation |
Differences
Where Last9 and CubeAPM differ
Three places the two platforms take a different approach, with the tradeoffs stated.
An AI agent that investigates, on your model
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One assistant in the app, in Slack, and in your IDE through MCP. It investigates, builds a diagnosis dashboard, and hands you the link.
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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.
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An agent can do more than read. Through MCP it can add a drop rule and stop ingesting the noisy source it found.
CubeAPM
An MCP server on your own CubeAPM instance, documented since January 2026, with tools that can only query logs, metrics, and traces. CubeAPM uses AI to sample traces and index logs, and has no investigation agent.
One licence, every feature
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One licence covers distributed tracing, profiling, custom metrics, custom dashboards, alerting, and RBAC, with forward deployed engineers on your account. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill, at your negotiated rates.
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Drop, remap, redact, forward, and aggregate metrics, logs, and traces at ingest, from the UI. Every rule is previewed against live data before you save it.
CubeAPM
Pro bills per GB ingested, with users free, and keeps data for 15 days. Distributed tracing, the continuous profiler, runtime metrics, custom metrics, custom dashboards, rich alerting, RBAC, unlimited retention, and a dedicated account rep are on Enterprise, at a custom annual price.
Matters most for
Teams that need distributed tracing and their own dashboards, not only logs and infrastructure metrics.
Every trace, and every label
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Last9 applies no sampling. Every trace stays available for an investigation, and you decide what to drop or aggregate with rules you write and preview against live data.
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Labels like customer_id or tenant stay on the metric, with no hard cardinality limit and no charge per label or metric name.
CubeAPM
Smart Sampling decides which traces to keep, from latency, errors, and other context. The only documented setting is how many error traces to keep per service, API, and error type. CubeAPM publishes no cardinality limit.
Tradeoff
CubeAPM's Smart Sampling cuts trace volume with no rules to write. Compare both on a trace you needed during your last incident.
Mobile apps and LLM apps, in the same platform
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RUM SDKs for Android, iOS, React Native, and Flutter, plus the web. Each network request from the app links to the backend trace behind it.
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Agents Monitoring reports conversations, tokens, cost, latency, and success rate for your own LLM apps, on OpenTelemetry GenAI conventions, with a separate view for coding agents.
CubeAPM
Browser RUM and synthetic monitoring are on both plans. CubeAPM's docs have no mobile SDK and no view of LLM tokens, cost, or models.
Matters most for
Teams that ship Android or iOS apps, or LLM features, and want them and the backend in one investigation.
Which fits you
Which one fits your team?
Choose Last9 if
- You want an AI agent that investigates on your own model provider, and an MCP server an agent can write through
- You need distributed tracing, custom metrics, and custom dashboards on one licence
- You want every trace kept, with drop and aggregate rules you set, not a sample Smart Sampling picks
- You ship mobile apps, and want Android, iOS, React Native, and Flutter RUM on the same platform
Choose CubeAPM if
- Logs, infrastructure, and browser RUM cover what you monitor today, and the Pro plan fits
- You want trace volume cut automatically, with no sampling rules to write
- You run on Azure or on-prem
- Your services run on New Relic or Elastic agents, and you will not re-instrument them yet
Migration
Moving off CubeAPM
What the switch involves, and what Last9 does for you.
Forward deployed engineers
A Last9 engineer runs the move with your team.
Talk to an engineerKeep your instrumentation
Services already on OpenTelemetry or Prometheus need only a new endpoint. Datadog Agent metrics and traces can dual-ship to Last9, and services on New Relic or Elastic agents move to OpenTelemetry.
See the integrationsMove what you rely on
PromQL metric queries carry over. The Last9 agent moves your dashboards and alerts with your team, and rewrites CubeAPM log queries.
Run both
Keep CubeAPM for services on New Relic or Elastic agents, and move your Kubernetes and OpenTelemetry services to Last9. The OpenTelemetry Collector can send the same data to both while you compare them on your own incidents.
Objections
The objections we hear most
Each one is a fair reason to hesitate.
CubeAPM bills per GB, with no per-host or per-user fees. Why change?
That is the Pro plan, and users are free on it. Distributed tracing, profiling, custom metrics, custom dashboards, RBAC, and a dedicated account rep are on Enterprise, at a custom annual price, and Pro keeps data for 15 days. Price the plan that matches what you monitor. Last9 is one licence that covers all of them, with forward deployed engineers on your account.
CubeAPM already runs in our own cloud account.
It does, and its team manages it. CubeAPM states that no log or trace data leaves your cloud, and it also runs on Azure and on-prem, where Last9 runs on AWS or GCP. The difference is in what runs there: Last9 runs its AI agent in your account too.
CubeAPM support answers in minutes on Slack.
Its reviewers praise that most, and Last9 works the same way: a shared channel in Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat, with forward deployed engineers on your account.
Our services run on New Relic and Datadog agents.
CubeAPM takes data from those agents on their own protocols. Last9 takes dual-shipped Datadog Agent metrics and traces, and services on New Relic agents move to OpenTelemetry. If a service depends on a New Relic agent, keep it on CubeAPM and move the rest first.
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.
67%
Average reduction in observability costs
2.5x
More telemetry retained without sampling
100+
Native integrations, OpenTelemetry-first
24x7
Support from forward deployed engineers
Customers
What do Last9 customers say?
With Last9, we just eliminated the toil. No more worrying about failing dashboards or alerts — we can finally use our metrics. It just works.
Last9 allowed us to offload the operational overhead of scaling so we could focus on business alerting rather than infrastructure management.
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