Glances
Glances 4.5.9 closes out the 4.x line as a 5.0 beta opens for testing.
Comparison · Analytics
Cortex vs Tinybird
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Cortex and Tinybird — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Cortex vs Tinybird: at a glance
What is Cortex?
Cortex 1.22 is on its fourth candidate, with sharded Parquet and years of deprecated flags removed.
Cortex 1.22.0 has been in release candidates since 12 September, reaching rc.3 on 6 October, and GitHub shows no final yet. The candidate adds sharded Parquet conversion and querying, resource-based query eviction that cancels the heaviest query when CPU or heap crosses a threshold, OCI Object Storage as a backend, and an active-series tracker per tenant. It also removes long-deprecated flags and config fields, some of which now stop Cortex from starting if left in place.
What is Tinybird?
Tinybird shrinks its Local image by a third after a run of observability updates.
Tinybird's Nov 6 update makes the Tinybird Local image about a third smaller to download and lighter on memory when idle. It follows system.merges for watching running merges, retryable MCP errors, shared Explorations and tighter viewer and guest permissions. Classic was switched off for Free and Developer plans in mid-October.
Cortex vs Tinybird: editorial side-by-side
Cortex
2.5ANALYTICS
Cortex 1.22 is on its fourth candidate, with sharded Parquet and years of deprecated flags removed.
◆ Current state
Cortex 1.22.0 has been in release candidates since 12 September, reaching rc.3 on 6 October, and GitHub shows no final yet. The candidate adds sharded Parquet conversion and querying, resource-based query eviction that cancels the heaviest query when CPU or heap crosses a threshold, OCI Object Storage as a backend, and an active-series tracker per tenant. It also removes long-deprecated flags and config fields, some of which now stop Cortex from starting if left in place.
◆ Where it's heading
The storage arc toward Parquet continues: after 1.21 made Parquet a Store Gateway query mode, 1.22 shards files that exceed column limits. A second arc is protecting shared clusters from heavy tenants, through query eviction, resource-based throttling and concurrent data-byte limits on store gateways. The cleanup is the maturity arc from 1.21 carried further: no-op flags that were tolerated for releases now fail at startup.
◆ Prediction
1.22.0 final should follow rc.3, which added only two fixes. Operators should expect upgrade failures from leftover deprecated flags, and the release notes tell them to grep runtime configs before upgrading.
Tinybird
5.0ANALYTICS
Tinybird shrinks its Local image by a third after a run of observability updates.
◆ Current state
Tinybird's Nov 6 update makes the Tinybird Local image about a third smaller to download and lighter on memory when idle. It follows system.merges for watching running merges, retryable MCP errors, shared Explorations and tighter viewer and guest permissions. Classic was switched off for Free and Developer plans in mid-October.
◆ Where it's heading
With the Classic sunset done, weekly updates are small and practical: visibility into what the cluster is doing, permission tightening and a better local development loop. MCP keeps getting incremental attention.
◆ Prediction
Expect more developer-loop and observability updates rather than a large new feature in the next few weeks.
Alternatives to Cortex and Tinybird
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Cortex or Tinybird.
Calibre
Calibre MCP lets your coding agent read RUM and Lighthouse data, then fix the slow code
Dovetail
Dovetail opens its docs to Claude and ChatGPT as co-authors.
Apache SkyWalking
SkyWalking 11.1 builds service maps from OpenTelemetry traces, no SkyWalking agent required.
OpenReplay
OpenReplay's feed is Helm chart bumps behind its asset-cacher deny list.
OpenHouse
OpenHouse tightens view authorization and moves its optimizer schema to Flyway.
See all Cortex alternatives → · See all Tinybird alternatives →
Recent activity from Cortex and Tinybird
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 4d agoTinybirdA smaller Tinybird Local image
- 11d agoTinybirdQuery running merges with system.merges
- 18d agoTinybirdShare Explorations with your Workspace
- 25d agoTinybirdTinybird Classic sunset for Free and Developer plans is today
- 1mo agoTinybirdRemove several organization members at once
- 1mo agoCortex1.22 candidate 4 fixes tenant-deletion cleanup on GCS and Azure
- 1mo agoTinybirdTinybird Local on arm64 requires a 4KiB page size kernel
- 1mo agoCortex1.22 candidate 3 fixes the ingestion-delay histogram
- 1mo agoCortex1.22 candidate 2 adds three bug fixes
- 1mo agoCortex1.22 candidate: sharded Parquet, query eviction, OCI storage
- 5mo agoCortex1.21.1 candidate hardens gossip, ingestion and status pages
- 6mo agoCortex1.21.0-rc.1 fixes memberlist, tenant federation and a memory leak
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Cortex and Tinybird?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Tinybird is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Cortex better than Tinybird?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Tinybird is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Cortex?
Top Cortex alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Cortex alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/cortex-metrics for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Tinybird?
Top Tinybird alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Tinybird alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/tinybird for the full list with editorial commentary on each.