# BotGauge vs Opik API + MCP (slim)

> Opik scores 71.5 (BB) to BotGauge's 40.7 (E) for agent tracing. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-opik.md (~5,750 tokens) · this version ~3,480 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-opik.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/botgauge-vs-opik
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-01
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Opik API + MCP scores 71.5 (BB) on agent readiness against BotGauge's 40.7 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do agent tracing.

- BotGauge: E 40.7, rank #1132 of 1260 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/botgauge.min.md
- Opik API + MCP: BB 71.5, rank #131 of 1260 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/opik.min.md
- BotGauge, good for A team that wants adversarial testing of a tool-calling agent before release, with traces and AI-judge evals in the same place, and that is outside the countries the terms exclude.
- Opik API + MCP, good for Teams that want an Apache-2.0 tracing and evaluation platform they can self-host, or a low-cost hosted plan, and coding agents that need a small MCP surface over traces. Ahead on Reliability, 72 against 18; Schema & documentation, 84 against 53; Agent ergonomics, 93 against 55; Payments & pricing, 35 against 10; Maintenance & community, 85 against 67; Transparency & trust, 75 against 64. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Runs on your own machine; Open source; No incidents deducted, where BotGauge loses 3 points for them.

| Category | BotGauge | Opik API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 18 | 72 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 53 | 84 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 93 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 56 | 57 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 10 | 35 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 67 | 85 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 64 | 75 |

| Fact (where they differ) | BotGauge | Opik API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | BotGauge AI Inc. | Comet |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.botgauge.com` | `https://www.comet.com/opik/api` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under BotGauge's terms (last updated 28 October 2026). The Python SDK on PyPI is source-available under FSL-1.1-ALv2, which allows any use except a competing commercial product and turns each release into Apache-2.0 two years after publication. Its repository isn't public | Apache-2.0 (platform, SDKs and MCP server). Opik Cloud is a hosted service under Comet's Terms of Service, and SSO, JWT auth and service accounts are Enterprise or Cloud only |
| Tools exposed | none | 5 |
| MCP registry | not listed | `io.github.comet-ml/opik-mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-31 | 2026-10-16 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-28 | 2026-06-05 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-28 | 2025-07-31 |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | none | 18k npm/wk, 497k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Opik API + MCP +54: BotGauge 18 (No status page. status.botgauge.com doesn't resolve and neither the site nor the docs link one (0). With no history to read, 5. No request rate limits for ingest or the eval API. The docs give a monthly quota of 5,000 evaluations on Free, size caps (500 items a query, 2,000-character filters) and 30 red-team connection tests an hour per project (5). No 429 or Retry-After guidance. `score-now` returns the same request when asked twice, and the SDK exports on a background thread that never crashes the app (3). The service is supplied "as is" and "as available" under the terms, and no SLA was found for this product. The 99.9 per cent SLA on the /ai-agents page belongs to the QA service (0). The service isn't labelled beta, but the SDK is 0.x, marked "4 - Beta" on PyPI, and the docs say API shapes may change before 1.0 (5). 0+5+5+3+0+5 = 18.); Opik API + MCP 72 (Graded with the hosted lines, on Opik Cloud's REST API and hosted MCP server. Atlassian Statuspage at status.comet.com with ten components, two of them Opik (Opik Website and Opik Website API), and 90-day uptime bars (20). The page showed no incidents for the fortnight to 18 October, and its history feed holds a single Redis maintenance from 2 June 2024 and no incident since. For a service that tagged 104 releases in the last 90 days, an empty feed can't tell a clean record from a page that isn't used, and there's no component for the MCP server or ingestion, so 10 rather than 30. Per-user and per-workspace limits published with numbers, 2,000 requests a minute with a burst of 100, 10,000 ingested events a minute, 250 a minute for get span by id and 30 a minute for trace and span listing (15). 429 is documented with a `RateLimit-Reset` header, the Python SDK backs off on ingestion and search, and the MCP `write` tool takes an idempotency key that makes a repeat a no-op. Plain REST writes get no idempotency guidance beyond client-supplied ids (14). Enterprise lists a 2-hour support response SLA. We found no uptime SLA (3). The REST API and hosted MCP server carry no beta or preview label (10). Total 72.)
- Agent ergonomics, Opik API + MCP +38: BotGauge 55 (API responses can be narrowed by `subject_ids` and `subject_kind`, a results query takes up to 500 items, and judges read at most 20,000 characters, but no field selection or summaries are documented (12). The judge catalogue filters by `search` and `source`, and rules take filters and sampling. No pagination is documented on any list endpoint (10). Errors carry a code, a message and a request id. Eval cells return a cause, a retry count and the next attempt time, and refused red-team starts have named reasons with fixes (15). `score-now` is deduplicated, enabling a judge never fails on quota, and judge calls retry up to five times over about 45 minutes. No idempotency keys on other writes (8). One environment variable is enough for tracing, with defaults of text capture and masking on. Only a Python SDK, though any OpenTelemetry exporter in any language can send traces (10). 12+10+15+8+10 = 55.); Opik API + MCP 93 (Five MCP tools, `read`, `list`, `write`, `schema` and `read_skill`, with write payload schemas fetched on demand through `schema` rather than loaded up front (25). `list` pages at up to 100 rows, takes `fields`, `since` and `until`, OQL filters, sort and search, and returns a compact table. REST lists take `page`, `size`, `exclude`, `truncate` and `strip_attachments` (20). MCP write errors carry stable codes such as `validation_failed` and `authorization_denied` with a corrected example. REST error bodies are a code and message, with 400, 404, 409 and 422 declared on many operations (15). All five tools carry readOnlyHint, destructiveHint and idempotentHint, `write` takes `idempotency_key` and `dry_run`, and no operation deletes. REST idempotency isn't documented (18). Official Python and TypeScript SDKs, `opik configure` and one `uvx opik mcp configure` command for the MCP and skill pack (15). Total 93.)
- Schema & documentation, Opik API + MCP +31: BotGauge 53 (No OpenAPI file for the eval or red-team endpoints was found in the docs or llms-full.txt. Ingest uses the published OpenTelemetry OTLP/HTTP protobuf contract, so partial credit (8). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and Markdown for every page on Mintlify (10). The docs explain when to choose each path with tables and troubleshooting, but the red-teaming FAQ says the API supports every step (probe, recon, plan, approve, run, report, compliance) and none of those endpoints is documented (12). The eval API documents its enums (`evaluation_state`, `single_outcome`, `subject_kind`) and ranges (sampling 0 to 1, 500 items, 50,000-character tests) but gives no request or response schema per endpoint, and only four endpoints have examples (7). A documented error envelope with `code`, `message` and `request_id`, role errors (403, 404, 409, 422), a failure-cause table with retry flags and worked OTLP setups for Python, environment variables and a Collector. No list of error codes (11). `/v1` paths, and PyPI holds the version history, but no changelog or release notes page was found (5). 8+10+12+7+11+5 = 53.); Opik API + MCP 84 (Public OpenAPI 3.1 at /docs/opik/openapi.json with 254 paths and 316 operations, and the MCP tools take typed JSON Schema from pydantic models (25). llms.txt with section indexes and a Markdown twin of every page at `.md` (10). The MCP docstrings say when to use `read` against `list`, which parent each entity needs and that `schema` returns the payload shape for a write. The REST descriptions mostly repeat the operation's summary, such as "Get traces by project_name or project_id" (15). Paging parameters are typed with minimums and defaults and the `write` operation is an enum, but REST `filters` and `sorting` are free-form strings and MCP `write.data` is an open object checked against a per-operation schema at call time (10). Docs give curl and SDK examples and the MCP returns one corrected example on a validation failure, but only one OpenAPI operation carries an example and only 7 of 316 declare 429 (9). Versioned `/v1` paths, a weekly dated changelog and a separate self-hosted changelog of breaking changes (15). Total 84.)
- Payments & pricing, Opik API + MCP +25: BotGauge 10 (No x402 or other machine payment (0). Paid plans for the agent product have no published prices, and botgauge.com/pricing prices the separate QA service (0). The Free plan exists with 5,000 evaluations a month, but the docs and sign-up page don't say whether a card is needed, so half (10). A person signs up in a browser at cloud.botgauge.com and creates keys in the console (0). 0+0+10+0 = 10.); Opik API + MCP 35 (Graded on Opik Cloud, as the paid option. No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-unit prices published without login, $5 per 100,000 spans and $29 per 100,000 spans for 400-day retention on Pro, plus plan prices (20). Free Cloud has 25,000 spans a month. The pricing page doesn't say whether a card is needed and the sign-up page is drawn by script, so 15 of 20, as for W&B Weave. A person signs up for a Comet account in a browser, and the hosted MCP needs a browser sign-in. Free self-hosting isn't an agent route (0). Total 35.)
- Maintenance & community, Opik API + MCP +18: BotGauge 67 (botgauge, botgauge-tracing and botgauge-cli 0.1.3 on 2026-10-31 (30). Four releases of each since 20 October 2026, 0.1.0, 0.1.1, 0.1.2 and 0.1.3 (20). Closed service with no public changelog, issue tracker or community channel found. Support by email at support@botgauge.com (4). One official SDK, Python, current (10). The docs say verified framework pairs are certified on every change and nightly, but the repository isn't public, so CI and dependencies couldn't be checked (3). 30+20+4+10+3 = 67. The product is 12 days old by its first package release.); Opik API + MCP 85 (Opik 2.2.103 tagged on 2026-10-16, with the npm `opik` package at the same version (30). 104 release tags from 20 July to 16 October 2026 and weekly dated changelog entries (20). Commits land daily and the repository has a SECURITY.md and a Slack community. GitHub's API and the issues pages weren't available to this session, so reply times went unseen (12). `io.github.comet-ml/opik-mcp` is active in the official MCP registry at 3.0.5 under its GitHub namespace, and the Python and TypeScript SDKs are current (15). 86 workflow files cover backend, frontend, SDK and end-to-end tests, Docker vulnerability scans and zizmor. Pass state not confirmed (8). Total 85.)
- Transparency & trust, Opik API + MCP +11: BotGauge 64 (Closed platform under terms dated 28 October 2026 that name BotGauge AI Inc. The SDK is source-available under FSL-1.1-ALv2, not an OSI licence, with each release becoming Apache-2.0 after two years, and its repository isn't public (16). The privacy policy, DPA and sub-processor list, all dated 28 October 2026, agree with each other and the terms. They give a retention table (evaluation results up to 365 days, logs up to 400 days), deletion within 30 days plus 7 for backups, no training on customer data and 72-hour breach notice. Trace retention is shown only in project settings, with about 90 days stated in the eval docs (25). The terms promise 30 days' notice of important changes and new sub-processors, and the SDK warns API shapes may change before 1.0. No deprecation policy for the API (5). Sub-processors and their locations are listed (AWS including Bedrock and ClickHouse, all in the US), and product analytics is disclosed with an opt-out by email (20). 16+25+5+20 = 66.); Opik API + MCP 75 (Backend, frontend, Python and TypeScript SDKs, the agent optimisation SDK and the MCP server are Apache-2.0. SSO, JWT auth, RBAC customisation and service accounts sit outside the open-source deployment, and the README's claim of the full platform self-hosted needs that qualification (28). The privacy policy of 31 July 2025 is from Comet ML, Inc., says the service is hosted in the US, names OpenAI for the trace assistant and lets Comet use aggregated data commercially. The Terms of 5 June 2026 say the customer owns Customer Data. Plan retention is on the pricing page. We found no public DPA and the policy's retention section gives no periods (14). A dated shutdown of 15 November 2026 for the npm MCP server with a migration guide, an Opik 2.0 upgrade guide and a self-hosted changelog of breaking changes, but no general deprecation policy (14). US data region stated for Free and Pro. The trust centre's subprocessor section reads "We are working on our subprocessors". Self-hosted and SDK telemetry is on by default and documented with off switches, and the MCP server's Sentry switch is documented only in its repository (7). Total 63.)