Sazabi vs Lightstep: End of Life and What to Use Now

Prices and facts checked on vendor pages on Nov 8, 2026.

Lightstep was an observability product for traces, metrics and logs. ServiceNow bought it and renamed it, and it is now being retired. Sazabi is AI-native observability and security that works from logs. We wrote this page, so keep our interest in mind. Because Lightstep is ending, this page compares Sazabi with what ServiceNow sells today, not with a product you can start using.

What Happened to Lightstep

ServiceNow acquired Lightstep in 2021 and, from August 2023, called it ServiceNow Cloud Observability. The docs stayed at docs.lightstep.com, and lightstep.com now redirects to ServiceNow's observability product page.

In an end of life notice updated August 25, 2025, ServiceNow said it is shifting focus away from Cloud Observability and Lightstep. Support ends on March 1, 2026 or your subscription term end date, whichever is later. After that the product will no longer be accessible. The notice also says:

ServiceNow is not planning to offer an equivalent observability solution on its platform.
There is no direct migration from Cloud Observability to the ServiceNow platform.
There is no replacement for the product.
A ServiceNow preferred partner is offered as an optional alternative.

Today is after March 1, 2026, so only customers whose term has not yet ended should still have access. One oddity: ServiceNow's documentation landing page for Cloud Observability, marked updated September 10, 2026, is still online and describes the product. The end of life notice governs availability. Ask your ServiceNow account team for your exact end date.

What ServiceNow Offers Now

The notice names four current focus areas: Service Observability, Service Reliability Management, Synthetic Monitoring and Agentic Observability. Two matter most here.

Service Observability consolidates monitoring data from several tools into one service-oriented view and brings traces and logs into incident investigation. The page says it is available with IT Operations Management and lists Contact Sales.
Service Reliability Management covers SLO tracking, on-call alert routing and error budgets used in change management. It is also available with IT Operations Management.

Neither page we checked lists prices, retention periods or a self-hosted option, so the table leaves those cells open.

At a Glance

	ServiceNow today	Sazabi
Scope	Service-centric operations tied to ServiceNow IT Operations Management	Logs first, with traces and metrics stored as records, issue detection and code context
Pricing model	Not published on the pages we checked; Contact Sales	Per 30-day plan, then per GB ingested and scanned, per issue, per AI credit
Entry price	Not published on the pages we checked	Hobby is $50 per 30 days
Log retention	Not stated on the pages we checked	7, 30 or 90 days by plan
Self-host or BYOC	Not described on the pages we checked	BYOC documented
AI or agent features	AIOps and Agentic Observability named as focus areas	Agent investigates issues and hands context to your coding agent
Starting point	You need ServiceNow IT Operations Management	You can sign up and send logs in minutes

How Sazabi Works and Charges

Sazabi plans cost $50 (Hobby), $200 (Startup) and $1,000 (Growth) per 30-day cycle. Each includes 200 GB of logs ingested, 50 GB scanned, 20 issues and 500 AI credits. After that it is $0.10 per GB ingested, $0.10 per GB scanned, $4 per issue and $0.01 per credit. Retention is 7, 30 and 90 days, and there is no yearly billing. Enterprise is custom. The pricing page has the full list.

Sazabi's agent starts from the data you already log. It detects issues, investigates root cause, and sends alerts to Slack or PagerDuty and can file issues in Linear. It then hands the evidence to your coding agent over MCP or the CLI. It does not write code.

Traces work differently than they did in Lightstep. Sazabi's intake takes OTLP spans over HTTP and stores each one as a searchable record with trace and span IDs, status and duration. The agent lines spans up with logs from the same request. If you depended on dedicated trace comparison views, test whether searching and asking questions covers your cases before you commit.

Moving OpenTelemetry Data Off Lightstep

Lightstep's own docs said that in most cases you use the OpenTelemetry Collector, plus the Operator on Kubernetes, to send telemetry. That helps you. Your instrumentation stays in place, and you change where the collector sends data.

Add a second otlphttp exporter to your collector pointing at a Sazabi project. Sazabi's OpenTelemetry docs cover SDKs and collectors.
Send logs and traces. Metrics use a separate source, and Prometheus metrics can be relayed through a collector (see the Prometheus integration).
Run both while your Lightstep term lasts, then remove the old exporter.

For an overview of the standard, see Sazabi's OpenTelemetry integration. If you want to see how Sazabi compares with other tools that ingest OTLP, read Sazabi and Honeycomb and Sazabi and Grafana.

When to Pick ServiceNow

Your company already runs ServiceNow IT Operations Management and wants observability data tied to services, incidents and the CMDB. ServiceNow's Cloud Observability documentation describes a Service Graph Connector for OpenTelemetry that loads OpenTelemetry data into the CMDB. That page does not say whether the connector outlives the product.
You need SLO tracking, on-call and change-management controls in one enterprise workflow.
You want a procurement path through an existing ServiceNow contract.

When to Pick Sazabi

You are leaving Lightstep and want a destination that takes OTLP today, without an enterprise sales cycle.
Your team debugs from logs and wants issues found without hand-built monitors.
You want findings handed to Claude Code, Codex or OpenCode.
You want transparent per-GB pricing. Prices and retention are on the page. Sazabi holds SOC 2 Type II, SOC 1, ISO 27001 and ISO 27017 certifications. Anyone who signs an NDA, customer or not, can request the SOC 2 Type II report and ISO 27001 audit reports from the Sazabi Trust Center. HIPAA safeguards are available on select plans.

Trying Sazabi Alongside Your Lightstep Contract

If your term has not ended, run Sazabi in parallel for a full cycle and compare it with a real incident. Browse the integrations catalog to see which log sources and connectors match your stack before you start.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Lightstep still available?

Lightstep was renamed ServiceNow Cloud Observability, and ServiceNow published an end of life notice. Support ends on March 1, 2026 or your subscription term end date, whichever is later, and the product is no longer accessible after that.

Does ServiceNow offer a replacement for Cloud Observability?

The notice says there is no replacement and that ServiceNow does not plan an equivalent observability product on its platform. It points to Service Observability, Service Reliability Management, Synthetic Monitoring and Agentic Observability as its current focus.

Can I reuse my OpenTelemetry instrumentation?

Lightstep docs said most teams send data with the OpenTelemetry Collector, and Sazabi accepts OTLP logs and traces. In most cases you change the exporter endpoint and headers, not the instrumentation.

Does Sazabi replace Lightstep trace analysis feature for feature?

No. Sazabi stores spans as searchable records and correlates them with logs, and its agent investigates issues. Check whether you rely on dedicated trace views before moving.

Sources

End of life notice (updated Aug 25, 2025): support ends Mar 1, 2026 or subscription term end, no replacement, no direct migration to the ServiceNow platform (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
ServiceNow acquired Lightstep in 2021 and rebranded it ServiceNow Cloud Observability from August 2023 (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
Data reached Cloud Observability mostly through the OpenTelemetry Collector and Operator; metrics, traces and logs (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
ServiceNow documentation landing page for Cloud Observability (formerly Lightstep), marked updated Sep 10, 2026 (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
Service Observability benefits and features, available with IT Operations Management, Contact Sales (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
Service Reliability Management features and availability with IT Operations Management (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
Sazabi plan prices, included usage, overage rates and retention (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
Sazabi OTLP/HTTP intake for logs and traces from any OpenTelemetry SDK (accessed Nov 8, 2026)

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