Compare

See your agents.
Keep your prompts.

Earlyman next to cloud trace tools, CodeBurn and Datadog's local mode. What each one reads, what it knows about your plan, and where it beats us.

Where your prompts goillustration
PromptsStay on your Mac

Never stored, never sent. How privacy works.

PlanLimits, ahead

5-hour and weekly windows, with runway.

SetupNo account

No key, no sign-up.

PriceFree

Free on your Mac for one project. No meter.

Side by side

Four tools,
six questions.

Earlyman compared with cloud trace tools, CodeBurn and Datadog's local mode
Earlymanlocal, on your Mac Cloud trace toolshosted CodeBurnlocal, MIT Datadog local modelocal, free
Where your prompts go NowhereNever stored or sent. A test plants a secret in a session log and checks it never appears. A hosted servicePrompt text is kept in the vendor's cloud, with masking options. Stay on your machineNothing uploaded. Its desktop app sends an anonymous report, on by default outside the EU. On your machineWhat it keeps there is not stated on the page we read.
Knows your plan limits Yes5-hour and weekly windows, runway, reset time, and when to switch model. Not listedPriced in API dollars. No plan windows on the pages we read. YesPlan, month pace, 5-hour and weekly windows. Not listed
Setup No account, no keyReads the logs already on your disk. An accountPlus an SDK or a plugin. One commandNothing to configure. Needs Node 22.13 or newer. No sign-up
Price Free on your Mac, no meterOne project and 10 PR receipts a month; Pro and Team remove the limits (early access). Free tier, then meteredPaid plans start at $39 a seat and reach $249 a month. Free, MITSponsor tiers. Free locallyThe hosted plan bills per LLM span.
Did your change help? Verdicts and experimentsA verdict date on each change, and experiments with a 95 % interval over runs you already have. ExperimentsCompare groups of live traffic, with an interval. Compare periods ExperimentsOn the hosted product.
Team totals Yes, self-hostedOpt-in. One server your team runs keeps totals and metadata per person and per service, never content. YesTeams with shared projects and roles, on the vendor's cloud. Not yetTeams is on a waitlist. On the hosted productOrganisation accounts.

Read from each vendor's public pages on 2026-10-20 · vendor claims not independently tested · corrections welcome

Fair is fair

Where they're
stronger.

Earlyman is one person's laptop, done carefully. These are real things we do not do.

Cloud trace tools

  • They read the conversation, so they can flag an agent that claimed success after failing. Earlyman sees structure, not words.
  • Teams: shared projects and roles.
  • Evals and datasets, and alerts from a judge that reads the conversation.
  • Audited security (SOC 2).

CodeBurn

  • Covers dozens of coding tools. Earlyman reads Claude Code only, today.
  • Desktop apps.
  • A far larger community on GitHub.
  • A teams view is on its way.

Datadog

  • Free, local and no sign-up, like us.
  • If your team already runs Datadog, it sits next to everything else you watch.
  • Organisation accounts.
Choose

Pick the one
that fits.

Earlyman, if

  • Your work is under NDA or regulated, and prompts cannot leave the machine.
  • You live on a Claude plan and keep hitting the limit.
  • You change CLAUDE.md, plugins or models and want proof it helped.

Something else, if

  • You need a judge that reads the conversation, across a team.
  • You code with more than Claude Code.
  • You already run Datadog.
Sources

Know what your agents cost.
Tell no one what they said.

See what it does → Exactly what it reads →