Grafana Tempo is a distributed tracing backend: export spans with OpenTelemetry, store them cheaply, and query with TraceQL. That is not a mechanic. Tink installs in one command, watches the Linux server, explains what is wrong, and helps you fix it.
Accidental sysadmins land on Tempo because it is the T in Grafana LGTM and Grafana already has a panel. Then the work is SDKs, sampling, object storage, and a full disk that still means you SSH in.
Tink is the other job: detect the issue on the machine, say why it happened in plain English, propose the command, and run it only after you approve. Keep Tempo if you already follow request paths across services in Grafana. Use Tink if you run Linux servers and want a mechanic.
| Feature | Tink | Grafana Tempo |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | 30 seconds (one curl | sh command) | Hours — Tempo, object storage, OTLP exporters in every service, Grafana, and TraceQL |
| What you get | Working monitoring, diagnosis, and approved fixes | Trace ingest, span search, and Grafana TraceQL panels if you instrument the apps |
| Pricing | Free (Scout) / $9 / $29 per machine per month | OSS is free software; Grafana Cloud Traces bills by ingest volume |
| Hidden costs | None — fully managed | Object storage, compactors, a Grafana instance, and SDKs in every service |
| Monitoring approach | Agent on the server — CPU, disk, services, logs, certs, ports | Instrument every app, then search spans you remembered to export |
| Configuration | None after install — heuristics and AI | Receivers, tenants, retention, sampling, and Grafana datasources |
| Plain-English diagnosis | Yes — AI explains root cause, impact, and fix | You write a TraceQL query, then SSH in to change the box |
| Fix execution | Proposes and executes approved commands with an audit trail | Trace search only — Tempo cannot restart nginx or free disk |
| Alerting | Built-in across 8 channels | Grafana Alerting after you write metrics-from-traces queries and wire a contact point |
| Predictive alerts | Yes — disk fills in ~6 days, memory and CPU trends | Not Tempo's job — it stores spans, it does not forecast disk |
| SSH brute-force detection | Built-in — parses auth.log every scan | Out of scope — traces do not read auth.log |
| Machine offline detection | Agent presence monitoring with multi-channel alerts | Silence if the exporter dies — unless you built a missing-span alert |
| Public status page | Shareable URL with 90-day history | Internal Grafana — customer status is extra work |
| Weekly fleet digest | Automated Monday digest + daily brief when issues are open | Saved Grafana dashboards — not a plain-English fleet narrative |
| On-call tracking | Built-in /oncall command + incident acknowledgment | Route Grafana alerts to PagerDuty, Slack, or another incident tool |
| Conversation interface | Telegram, WhatsApp, web dashboard, CLI | Grafana Explore and TraceQL |
| Learning curve | None — works after install | Steep — OTel SDKs, sampling, TraceQL, and Tempo's microservices or single-binary mode |
| Best for | Freelancers, small teams, accidental sysadmins (1-50 Linux servers) | Teams already on Grafana that need cheap, high-volume distributed tracing |
Keep Tempo when you already want that exact job:
The trace store is already in Grafana. A working ops loop for five Linux boxes is not:
For a 5-server team, Tink Mechanic at $45/month is cheaper than hosting Tempo plus Grafana, and every scan includes a diagnosis a span query will not type.
No OTel SDK homework. No TraceQL. No object-storage bill. One command install.
Try Tink free — one command installAlso compare: Tink vs Grafana Loki · Tink vs Grafana + Prometheus · Tink vs Honeycomb