Comparison

Everstack vs Braintrust

Braintrust makes the better evaluation product, and this page says so more than once. The two differences that decide it are that self-hosting is Enterprise-only on their side, and that Everstack evaluates runs from the same control plane that executed them rather than data you instrument and push.

EverstackEverstack
vs
BraintrustBraintrust
View pricingRead documentation

What is Braintrust?

Braintrust is an evaluation platform for AI applications, covering datasets, experiments, scorers, LLM judges and human review. Self-serve pricing runs from a $0 Starter tier to Pro at $249 per month, metered on processed data and score count. Self-hosting and hybrid deployment are available on the Enterprise tier only.

Why teams choose Everstack

  • Self-hosting is the default path, not an Enterprise line item
  • Evaluations score runs from the same control plane that executed them
  • No processed-data ceiling to buy past on the way to production

Braintrust: Strengths & Limitations

Strengths

  • The strongest pure evaluation product in the category. Datasets, experiments, scorers and the review workflow are more polished than ours.
  • Genuinely good developer ergonomics for writing and iterating on scorers, which is the part teams actually spend time in.
  • A real free tier: $10 of monthly credits, 1 GB of processed data and 10,000 scores is enough to run a serious pilot.
  • Published pricing on the self-serve tiers, which is more transparency than several competitors offer.
  • Well-known and widely adopted, with a large library of worked examples for eval design.

Limitations

  • Self-hosting and hybrid deployment are Enterprise-only. Starter and Pro are hosted.
  • Pricing meters processed data and scores, so cost scales with evaluation volume rather than seats.
  • It evaluates. Model routing, agent execution and isolated code sandboxes are separate systems.
  • Getting evaluation data in means instrumenting the application, because Braintrust is not in the request path.

Everstack advantage

Self-host on Starter, not just EnterpriseEvals share a trace with the gateway and runtimeOne Apache-2.0 licenceScoring runs against traffic you already route

The facts, side by side

Licence, deployment model and list price, taken from each vendor's own documentation. Every source is linked at the bottom of this page.

FactEverstackBraintrust
Is there an open source coreYes. Apache-2.0 across the repository, and you can read, run, fork and redistribute it.No. There is no public repository for the platform, and Braintrust's own self-hosting docs state the deployed architecture is not open source. Two satellite libraries are genuinely MIT and usable standalone: autoevals and braintrust-proxy.
What self-hosting actually meansThe whole platform runs on your infrastructure.Hybrid. The control plane (web UI, auth, metadata) stays hosted by Braintrust; only the data plane runs in your cloud, via Terraform modules they author. Traces, prompts and scores stay with you, which is a good split for privacy-sensitive teams but not a no-vendor-in-the-path one.
Self-hosted or hybrid deploymentThe default. Run the Apache-2.0 build with Docker or Kubernetes at any tier.Enterprise only. On-prem or hosted deployment for high volume or privacy-sensitive data is described as a custom Enterprise arrangement, not available on Starter or Pro (August 2026).
Published pricingStarter $0, Build $20/month, Scale $100/month, Enterprise custom (August 2026).Starter $0 with $10 monthly credits, 1 GB processed data and 10,000 scores. Pro $249/month with $249 credits, 5 GB processed data and 50,000 scores, plus custom charts and priority support. Enterprise custom (August 2026).
What the meter countsPlan tier plus metered usage.Processed data in GB and number of scores, so cost rises with evaluation volume.
Evaluation depthDatasets, scorers, LLM judges, human annotation queues and regression analysis. Good, but Braintrust's eval product is more mature and we are not claiming otherwise.The most polished evaluation workflow in this comparison set.
How evaluation data arrivesRuns that went through the gateway or agent runtime are already there. Scoring attaches to traces that exist.Client-side instrumentation. Braintrust is not in the request path, so you send it what you want evaluated.
Model gateway and agent runtimeSame control plane.Out of scope.
Isolated code executionDocker, Firecracker and Kubernetes sandboxes.Out of scope.

Pricing and deployment tiers read from braintrust.dev/pricing on 31 August 2026. Prices change; verify before you buy.

Feature comparison

Direct capability comparison across key dimensions

FeatureEverstackBraintrust
Evaluations
Datasets and experiment runs
LLM-as-judge scorers
Human review and annotation
Regression comparison between runs
Scorer authoring ergonomics
Deployment
Self-hosting on the free tier
Hybrid deploymentEnterprise
Platform
Multi-provider model gateway
Stateful agent runtime
Isolated code execution
Evaluations attached to routed traffic without instrumentation
Observability
OpenTelemetry-native tracesPartial

The same job, in both products

Working code rather than adjectives. Each snippet follows the quickstart published by the product it belongs to.

Score a set of outputs against a dataset

The eval loop looks similar in both. The difference is where the runs being scored came from: traffic Everstack already routed, versus data you send to Braintrust.

Everstack

eval.ts
import Everstack from "@everstack/node";const client = new Everstack({ apiKey: process.env.EVERSTACK_API_KEY });await client.evaluations.run({  dataset: "support-replies",  target: { agent: "support-agent" },  scorers: ["factuality", "tone"],});

Braintrust

eval.ts
import { Eval } from "braintrust";import { Factuality } from "autoevals";Eval("support-replies", {  data: () => loadDataset(),  task: async (input) => runSupportAgent(input),  scores: [Factuality],});

Key evaluation questions

What to ask when comparing Braintrust to Everstack

QuestionEverstackBraintrust
Can I self-host without an Enterprise contract?Yes, at any tier.No. Self-hosting and hybrid are Enterprise only.
Which has the better evaluation product?Ours is complete but younger.Braintrust, and by a clear margin on scorer ergonomics and workflow polish.
Do I have to instrument my app to evaluate it?Not for traffic routed through the gateway, which is already there.Yes. Braintrust is not in the request path.
How does cost scale?Plan tier plus metered usage.With processed data in GB and number of scores.

Feature-by-feature analysis

Where each product is genuinely stronger, row by row

Getting self-hosted

Everstack wins
Everstack

The default path at every tier, Apache-2.0, Docker or Kubernetes.

Braintrust

Enterprise only. Starter and Pro are hosted; on-prem and hybrid are a custom arrangement.

Why Everstack

If a deployment constraint is why you are shopping, an Enterprise-gated self-host is a very different proposition from a free one.

Evaluation product maturity

Braintrust wins
Everstack

Complete, but younger and less polished.

Braintrust

The most mature evaluation workflow here, with better scorer ergonomics.

Why Braintrust

If evals are the centre of your workflow rather than one part of it, this advantage is theirs and it is significant.

Where the runs being scored come from

Everstack wins
Everstack

Traffic already routed through the gateway or agent runtime. Scoring attaches to traces that exist.

Braintrust

Data you instrument and send. Braintrust is not in the request path.

Why Everstack

Removing the push step removes the most common reason eval coverage stays partial: nobody instrumented the service that matters.

How cost scales

Close call
Everstack

Plan tier plus metered usage.

Braintrust

Processed data in GB and score count, so cost rises with evaluation volume.

How to choose

Neither model is wrong. Per-GB pricing is cheaper at low volume and gets expensive exactly when evaluation becomes a habit rather than an experiment.

Moving from Braintrust to Everstack

Datasets port through an export and import. Scorers have to be re-declared, because the concepts map closely but the definitions are not wire compatible. The bigger change is that evaluations stop being something you push data into and start being something that attaches to traffic you already route.

  1. 1

    Export datasets

    Pull datasets out through Braintrust's API and import them as Everstack datasets. This part is mechanical.

  2. 2

    Re-declare scorers

    Factuality, tone and custom scorers map conceptually but need re-expressing. Budget real time for tuning LLM judges to match previous scores.

  3. 3

    Route traffic through the gateway

    Once requests go through Everstack, runs are available for scoring without a separate push step, which removes the instrumentation you were maintaining.

  4. 4

    Re-baseline before you trust regressions

    Judge prompts differ, so absolute scores will not match. Re-run your reference set on both and compare shape rather than magnitude.

What breaks

  • Braintrust SDK code and autoevals scorer imports need rewriting.
  • Anything built against the Braintrust API directly has to be re-pointed.
  • Custom chart and view configurations do not port.

What does not carry over

  • Historical experiment runs and their scores.
  • Saved views and custom charts.
  • Human review history and annotation state.

Read this part first

When to choose Braintrust instead

Braintrust makes the best evaluation product in this comparison set. Pick Braintrust over Everstack when any of these is true.

  • Evaluation is the whole problem and you want the most capable tool for it. Their scorer authoring and experiment workflow are more polished than ours and that is worth paying for if evals are your day job.
  • You want a hosted product and the tiers fit. $249 per month for 5 GB of processed data and 50,000 scores is legible pricing.
  • You are already instrumented and happy sending eval data explicitly. Not being in the request path is an architectural advantage as well as a limitation.
  • You need eval maturity today rather than eval plus everything else eventually.
  • You want the larger community and the bigger library of worked examples for eval design.
  • Your data volume is modest enough that per-GB pricing is cheaper than operating infrastructure yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about choosing between Everstack and Braintrust

Ready to get started?

See how Everstack compares to Braintrust for your specific use case.

View pricingRead docs

Sources & References

Braintrust pricingBraintrust documentationEverstack licence (Apache-2.0)

Last reviewed: August 31, 2026. This comparison is for informational purposes and reflects our understanding of competitor capabilities based on publicly available documentation.

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