# OpenLIT vs Braintrust

> Braintrust is widely used for prompt management, datasets, and evaluation experiments as a managed product. OpenLIT is an open-source Apache-2.0 platform you self-host for LLM observability, LLM-as-a-judge, Prompt Hub, and cost tracking on OpenTelemetry.

- HTML: https://openlit.io/compare/openlit-vs-braintrust
- Markdown: https://openlit.io/compare/openlit-vs-braintrust.md

Compare OpenLIT and Braintrust for LLM evaluation and prompt management. OpenLIT is Apache 2.0 and free to self-host with OTel-native tracing. Braintrust is a commercial, cloud-first platform strong on experiments and eval UX.

## Feature comparison

### Core Architecture

| Feature | OpenLIT | Braintrust |
| --- | --- | --- |
| OpenTelemetry-native | Yes | No |
| Open Source | Apache 2.0 | Commercial / cloud-first |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Limited / commercial |
| Free self-hosted tier | Yes | No |
| Vendor-neutral data export | Yes | No |

### LLM Monitoring

| Feature | OpenLIT | Braintrust |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Token usage tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Cost per request | Yes | Yes |
| Latency / p95 metrics | Yes | Yes |
| Prompt & response logging | Yes | Yes |
| Broad LLM / framework auto-instrumentation | Yes | Via SDK / integrations |

### Infrastructure Monitoring

| Feature | OpenLIT | Braintrust |
| --- | --- | --- |
| GPU monitoring (NVIDIA + AMD) | Yes | No |
| Vector DB tracing | Yes | No |
| Multi-environment tagging | Yes | Yes |

### Developer Tools

| Feature | OpenLIT | Braintrust |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Prompt Hub (versioning) | Yes | Yes |
| Evaluations (LLM-as-a-judge) | Yes | Yes |
| Dataset / experiment UX | Via evals + traces | Yes |
| Secrets Vault | Yes | No |
| Fleet Hub (multi-deployment) | Yes | No |

### Pricing & data

| Feature | OpenLIT | Braintrust |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free self-hosted | Yes | No |
| Data residency on your infra | Full (self-hosted) | Cloud by default |

## When to choose OpenLIT

- You need an Apache-2.0, self-hosted stack for compliance or cost control
- You want OpenTelemetry-native tracing plus evals and Prompt Hub in one product
- You need GPU monitoring, Vault, or agent monitoring alongside evaluation
- You want unlimited self-hosted usage without per-trace SaaS pricing

## When to choose Braintrust

- You want a managed cloud product optimised for eval experiments and datasets
- Self-hosting and open-source licensing are not requirements
- You prefer Braintrust’s experiment and scoring UX as your primary workflow

## Related

- All comparisons: https://openlit.io/compare.md
- Pricing: https://openlit.io/pricing.md
- Docs: https://docs.openlit.io/latest/openlit/quickstart-ai-observability