Traceable detects API threats, vulnerabilities, and data exposure. Atatus instruments your application code directly, giving engineering teams request-level traces, real user sessions, slow query analysis, and performance anomaly detection across the full application stack.
Traceable is built to protect your APIs from threats — detecting BOLA attacks, data exposure, bot traffic, and OWASP API Top 10 vulnerabilities at runtime. Atatus is built to tell your engineering team why an API endpoint is slow, which database query is responsible, and how many real users are experiencing the impact. Both tools instrument API traffic, but for entirely different purposes and teams.
Atatus captures the full execution trace for every API request — endpoint response time, downstream service calls, database queries, and external API dependencies, all with span-level timing. Traceable captures API transaction data to analyze security behavior and threat patterns. The trace data collected serves fundamentally different use cases for different teams.
Atatus connects API endpoint performance directly to real user sessions — showing which users experience slow responses, which pages are affected, and what the Core Web Vitals impact is in production. Traceable correlates API traffic with user sessions to detect session-based attacks. User session data in Atatus answers performance questions; in Traceable it answers security questions.
When an API endpoint is slow, Atatus shows every database call it made — the normalized SQL, execution time, call frequency, and which specific query accounts for the most latency. Traceable monitors API traffic for sensitive data exposure and authorization violations but does not provide query-level performance analysis or slow query tracing for engineering triage.
Here is where Atatus covers application performance observability that Traceable was not designed to provide, for engineering teams who need to understand API performance, not just API security.
Traceable tells you about threat activity on that endpoint. Atatus tells you that the endpoint is making 12 database calls per request, three of which are unindexed and account for 780ms of the total response time. Engineering teams need that second answer to fix the problem.
Atatus tracks deployments and correlates each release with changes in endpoint response time distributions. When a deployment introduces a latency regression on a specific API endpoint, Atatus surfaces it within minutes with the affected transactions and the query or service call responsible. Traceable monitors the same traffic for security anomalies, not performance regressions.
Atatus captures JavaScript exceptions from real user browsers, groups them by error fingerprint, and links them to the affected page URLs and user sessions. A client-side error that prevents users from even making an API call is entirely outside the scope of Traceable, which monitors API traffic that has already reached your backend.
Atatus is designed for developer and SRE teams to self-serve performance investigation — from a slow endpoint trace down to the specific query and the user sessions affected. Traceable is designed for security teams investigating API threats and vulnerabilities. The workflows, data models, and team personas are fundamentally different between the two platforms.
When an API endpoint starts returning errors, Atatus lets engineering teams move directly from the failing transaction trace to the relevant application log lines in the same platform. Traceable correlates API events with security logs to identify threat actors and attack patterns — a different data need for a different team workflow.
Atatus covers APM, distributed tracing, RUM, database query monitoring, log management, error tracking, and synthetics in one platform at publicly listed per-seat pricing. Traceable focuses on API security and requires separate observability tooling for performance monitoring, query analysis, and real user measurement — adding cost and context-switching overhead.
A technical breakdown of where each platform focuses and what the differences mean for engineering and security teams working on the same application.
Full-stack APM with distributed tracing from browser to database across Node.js, Python, Ruby, Java, .NET, PHP, Go
Real User Monitoring capturing Core Web Vitals, session detail, and JS error correlation from real browsers in production
Performance anomaly detection that baselines every transaction and endpoint, alerting on response time and error rate deviations
Error tracking with auto-grouped server and browser exceptions linked to affected transactions, user sessions, and release versions
Log management with structured log ingestion unified with traces and metrics in one platform
Database query monitoring with slow query detection, normalized SQL, and query-to-transaction linkage across MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and more
Synthetic monitoring with HTTP and browser checks from 20+ global locations at per-minute intervals
Predictable per-seat pricing with all capabilities included in every plan and no per-API or per-endpoint billing
API tracing for security context — Traceable captures API transaction traces to power security analysis and threat detection, not performance triage for engineering teams
No Real User Monitoring — browser performance, Core Web Vitals, and user session performance data are outside the Traceable product scope
API threat and anomaly detection — detects API abuse, BOLA, bot traffic, session hijacking, and behavioral anomalies indicative of security threats
No performance error tracking — Traceable tracks API security events and threat indicators; application exception grouping and stack trace triage are not core capabilities
Security event logging — detailed security event logs for forensic analysis and threat investigation; not structured for application performance correlation
No database query monitoring — Traceable monitors API traffic at the HTTP layer; database query performance and slow query analysis are not available
No synthetic monitoring — scheduled uptime and performance checks from global locations are outside the Traceable product scope
Enterprise security pricing — Traceable is an enterprise security product; pricing is not publicly listed and requires a sales engagement
“We had Traceable in place for API security and it handled that well. But our engineering team had a separate problem — they needed to understand why specific endpoints were slow and which queries were behind it. Those are two different questions requiring two different tools. Atatus closed the performance observability gap without touching what Traceable was doing on the security side.”
What engineering and security teams most commonly want to know when comparing Atatus and Traceable.
They serve fundamentally different teams with different problems. Traceable is designed for security engineers and AppSec teams who need to detect API threats, discover shadow APIs, prevent data exposure, and investigate security incidents. Atatus is designed for software engineers, SREs, and product teams who need to understand application performance, why an endpoint is slow, which query is responsible, and how many users are affected. In most organizations, both tools are justified. They instrument the same API traffic but for completely different analytical purposes and team workflows.
Both tools instrument API traffic but the data model, storage, and analytical purpose differ significantly. Traceable's OmniTrace engine captures API request and response payloads to power security analysis including threat detection, behavioral anomaly identification, sensitive data discovery, and forensic investigation of attack sequences. Atatus captures API request traces to power performance analysis, endpoint response time distributions, downstream service call timing, database query performance, and user session impact. The same API request produces very different insights depending on which tool is analyzing it and for which purpose.
Yes. Atatus agents instrument your application at the runtime and framework level, collecting performance telemetry independently of any security tooling in place. Traceable operates at the API gateway or eBPF layer to capture traffic for security analysis. The two tools do not interfere with each other and many engineering teams run both. Traceable for the security team and Atatus for the engineering team on the same application stack.
Atatus is not an API security tool. It does not detect API threats, perform vulnerability scanning, identify BOLA attacks, or monitor for data exposure. Atatus focuses on application performance observability: response time, error rates, database query performance, and real user impact. If your primary need is API security, Traceable is the appropriate tool. If your primary need is understanding API performance and user experience, Atatus is built for that.
Atatus pricing is publicly listed on the website and scales on a per-seat model. APM, RUM, error tracking, log management, database monitoring, and synthetics are all included in every plan with no per-API or per-endpoint charges. Traceable is an enterprise security product and pricing is not publicly listed, evaluation and procurement requires a sales engagement. The two tools serve different budgets and buying processes: Atatus is developer self-serve, Traceable is enterprise security procurement.
Yes. Atatus holds SOC 2 Type II certification and is GDPR compliant. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Data residency options are available on Enterprise plans and full security documentation including penetration test results is available on request for compliance and procurement review processes.
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