Agentic Index
Arize AI vs Braintrust (2026)
Choose Arize AI when you want AI observability rooted in ML monitoring discipline and choose Braintrust when eval driven development is the workflow you are standardizing. Arize starts at 50 dollars a month with a free tier plus the open source Phoenix core, while Braintrust offers a free Starter and Pro at 249 dollars a month with usage based overage. Arize suits teams extending existing model monitoring into LLM systems; Braintrust suits product teams iterating on prompts and evals daily.
| At a glance | Arize AI | Braintrust |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Agent infrastructure | Agent infrastructure |
| Entry price | From $50/mo · free tier + open source | Free Starter (1 GB data, 10K scores) · Pro $249/mo |
| Free / trial | AX Free (25k spans/mo, 1 GB, 15 day retention) and Phoenix open source, both free | Free Starter plan, no card (1 GB data, 10K scores/mo, 14 day retention) |
| Pricing confidence | public exact | public exact |
| Feature |
A
Arize AI
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Partial | No / Not documented |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
Partial | No / Not documented |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing |
A
Arize AI
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
From $50/mo · free tier + open source | Free Starter (1 GB data, 10K scores) · Pro $249/mo |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public — exact | Public — exact |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
Flat monthly plan with usage overage on trace spans and ingestion (GB) | usage |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Medium variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tier
|
Free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Mixed | Mixed |
Choose Arize AI if
- You already run ML observability and want LLM tracing in the same pane
- An open source core (Phoenix) inside a commercial platform hedges lock in
- Monitoring production drift and quality over time is the primary job
Choose Braintrust if
- Prompt experiments, datasets, and regression evals are your daily loop
- Unlimited seats with usage based pricing matches a fast growing team
- You want a managed platform tuned for shipping AI features, not ML ops heritage