Open-source vs. Cloud

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Evidently ecosystem 

Evidently AI develops several products:

• Evidently library (OSS).

• Tracely library (OSS).

• The Evidently Platform (OSS and Commercial).

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Evidently

The Evidently Python library allows users to run various data and AI evaluations and generate Reports and Test Suites with evaluation results. It is best suited for individual data scientists, AI, and ML engineers analyzing the quality of AI systems in a Python environment. The library is open-source and available under the Apache 2.0 license.

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Tracely

The Tracely Python library lets users capture near real-time data from their AI applications. It is based on OpenTelemetry. The library is open-source (Apache 2.0).

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Evidently Platform

The Evidently Platform is a web application designed for AI testing and observability. It is tailored for teams looking to collaborate on AI quality from experiments to production monitoring. It natively integrates with Evidently and Tracely and has two options:

• Open-source edition. A basic version of the platform is included in the open-source Evidently library. It has a limited feature set in favor of a very lightweight deployment.

• Commercial edition. Offers additional advanced features for AI quality workflows, collaboration, and scalability. Two deployment options are available:

  • Evidently Cloud. The recommended and easiest way to start. Evidently Cloud is hosted and managed by Evidently AI.

  • Evidently Enterprise (Self-Hosted). Designed for teams with strict security requirements. This version offers a full-featured platform equivalent to Evidently Cloud that can be deployed in private clouds or on-premises.

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OSS vs. Cloud / Enterprise

Platform editions differ in features, level of support, and maintenance costs.

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Feature availability

See full details on the commercial plans on the Pricing page.

In summary:

• All the core evaluation features are open-source.

• The OSS version of the Evidently Platform offers a lightweight deployment with a base feature set for storing and visualizing the evaluation results.

• The commercial version of the Platform includes additional functionality related to dataset management, collaboration and no-code managed workflows. It also includes security features like role-based access control and comes with a scalable backend.

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Support

The commercial platform version includes dedicated support.

• Evidently OSS. We provide documentation and a Discord community forum, but as a small team, we can’t offer extensive support to open-source users. If you’re running Evidently OSS in production, you must be comfortable troubleshooting and resolving issues on your own. For more hands-on support, we recommend upgrading to Evidently Cloud / Enterprise.

• Evidently Cloud / Enterprise. We offer varying tiers of support based on the selected Plan. In any scenario, you get direct access to the developers who built the Platform. We help resolve any issues and bugs and provide ongoing assistance on feature configuration and use. For the Enterprise Plan, we also offer onboarding and training sessions.

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Hosting and maintenance

Maintenance requirements depend on the setup you choose.

• Evidently OSS. You’re responsible for deploying and managing the Platform within your environment, including backups, upgrades, and scaling. While the software is free, you need engineering resources for maintenance and cloud resources for storage and compute.

• Evidently Cloud. The Platform is fully managed by the Evidently team, so that you can focus on building your AI products without worrying about infrastructure. This includes automatic updates, security patches, and scalability, making it the most cost-effective option. The Platform is instantly available upon signup. 

• Evidently Enterprise (Self-Hosted). For large organizations that need to keep data on-premises. The Enterprise version comes with dedicated implementation support, but your team must still manage ongoing configuration and maintenance.