LightStep
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2015
- HeadquartersSan Francisco, United States
- Headcount101–250
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
LightStep firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- LightStep
- Legal name
- LightStep
- Website
- https://lightstep.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2015
- Operating status
- Acquired
- Headcount range
- 101–250 employees
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
LightStep industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Application Performance Monitoring (APM) / Observability
- NAICS
- Computer Systems Design and Related Services (54151), Computer Facilities Management Services (541513), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (5182)
- SIC
- Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Computer Programming Services (7371), Services-Computer Processing & Data Preparation (7374)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Service Desk & Help Desk Services (BPAEAJAA)
Keywords
Where LightStep is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Francisco
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Markets served
LightStep business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations
LightStep product offering
Product offeringCore offering
LightStep provides application performance monitoring (APM) and distributed tracing capabilities for cloud-native and microservices-based software systems. Its observability platform enables software developers and IT operations teams to monitor application performance, detect anomalies, trace requests across services, and resolve incidents in production environments. Following its 2021 acquisition by ServiceNow, the technology has been integrated into ServiceNow's Cloud Observability product.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- LightStep Distributed Tracing & APM Platform
Companies that use LightStep
Customer profileIdeal customer profiles1 record
LightStep technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
LightStep partnerships and signals
Strategic signalRecent moves5 records
Expansion highlights4 records
LightStep competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Splunk APM: Splunk's application performance monitoring and observability suite (now part of Cisco), serving enterprise DevOps and SRE use cases overlapping with LightStep's target market.
- Grafana Labs: Provider of Grafana visualization, Loki, Tempo (distributed tracing), and Pyroscope — a directly comparable open-standards-based observability stack competing with LightStep.
- Dynatrace: Enterprise application performance monitoring and observability platform with AI-assisted root cause analysis — competes head-to-head with LightStep in distributed tracing and APM for cloud-native applications.
- New Relic: Full-stack observability platform with APM, distributed tracing, and infrastructure monitoring capabilities — a direct comparator to LightStep's APM offerings.
- Datadog: Public cloud monitoring and observability platform offering APM, distributed tracing, infrastructure monitoring, and logs — directly comparable to LightStep's APM and distributed tracing capabilities.
- Sentry: Application error tracking and performance monitoring platform widely adopted by developers — overlaps with LightStep on performance monitoring and tracing for software applications.
- Honeycomb: Observability platform focused on distributed tracing and high-cardinality event analysis — a focused competitor in the same engineering-targeted observability niche as LightStep.
- Elastic APM: APM and observability offering within the Elastic Search Platform, covering distributed tracing, logs, and metrics — comparable to LightStep's full observability stack.
- AppDynamics: Cisco-owned enterprise APM platform providing application performance monitoring and business transaction tracing — directly comparable to LightStep's core APM functionality.
Emerging players
- Instana: IBM-owned automated APM and observability platform with strong distributed tracing capabilities, serving enterprise IT operations use cases directly comparable to LightStep.
Market position
Strengths2 records
Weaknesses3 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks4 records
Key highlights5 records
Customer concentration
LightStep social profiles
Digital presenceLightStep financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
LightStep leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles4 records
LightStep funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds4 records
Investors6 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
LightStep M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about LightStep
What does LightStep do?
LightStep provides application performance monitoring (APM) and distributed tracing capabilities for cloud-native and microservices-based software systems. Its observability platform enables software developers and IT operations teams to monitor application performance, detect anomalies, trace requests across services, and resolve incidents in production environments. Following its 2021 acquisition by ServiceNow, the technology has been integrated into ServiceNow's Cloud Observability product.
Is LightStep a public or private company?
LightStep is a private company. It is classified as corporate owned and is currently acquired.
When was LightStep founded?
LightStep was founded in 2015. It employs 101 to 250 people.
Where is LightStep based?
LightStep is headquartered in San Francisco, United States, in the North America region.
Who are LightStep's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Splunk APM, Grafana Labs, Dynatrace, New Relic, Datadog, Sentry, Honeycomb, Elastic APM and AppDynamics. Instana is listed as an emerging player.
Does LightStep have an API?
No public API is recorded for LightStep.
What industry is LightStep in?
LightStep's product category is Application Performance Monitoring (APM) / Observability. Its primary akta.pro industry code is BPAEAJAA, Service Desk & Help Desk Services. Its NAICS code is 54151 and its SIC code is 7370.