Why you'd want it
Phoenix collects traces through OpenTelemetry-based OpenInference instrumentation, with integrations for frameworks such as the OpenAI Agents SDK, Claude Agent SDK, LangGraph and Vercel AI SDK across Python, JavaScript, Java and Go. On top of traces it offers LLM-based evals, versioned datasets, experiments, a prompt playground and prompt management. It runs locally with phoenix serve, in a container or on Kubernetes, and exposes a remote MCP endpoint so Claude Code, Cursor and other MCP clients can query traces, datasets and experiments.
Best for
- Local trace debugging during development
- OpenTelemetry-based stacks
- Self-hosted eval and experiment tracking
Use it when
You want an observability and eval UI on your own machine or infrastructure, instrumented with OpenTelemetry rather than a vendor-specific SDK.
Skip it if
You need an OSI open source license or want to offer it as a hosted service; the Elastic License 2.0 forbids that. For a managed platform Arize points to its separate Arize AX product.
Editor's note
Phoenix is under the Elastic License 2.0, so it is listed as free rather than open-source.