Agentiqa vs Arize Phoenix
Last checked 31 Oct 2026
Short answer: Arize Phoenix is an open source tool for AI observability and evaluation. It traces agents on OpenTelemetry and runs evals, datasets and experiments, locally or self-hosted. Arize AX is the company's hosted platform. Agentiqa is an AI Quality System. Its release gates run your agent's key tasks before each release and check what changed in the connected system. Phoenix helps you see and score what the agent did. Agentiqa checks whether the next version still writes the right records.
At a glance
| Arize Phoenix / Arize AX | Agentiqa | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | "Open-source AI observability & evaluation" (Phoenix); hosted platform (AX) | AI Quality System for production AI agents |
| Main job | Tracing, evals, versioned datasets, experiments, prompt management | Run the agent's key tasks before each release and check the result |
| What it looks at | Traces and spans, scored outputs | The records in the connected system after each task, plus the trace and a recording |
| Production tracing | Yes | No. Release gates run before release |
| Free option | Phoenix runs locally or self-hosted; AX Free $0 with 25k spans a month, 15-day retention | Community Edition: web apps and simple agentic workflows, 20 runs a month, no credit card |
| Paid plans | AX Pro $50/month (50k spans, 30-day retention); AX Enterprise, SaaS or self-hosted | Pro $39/month; Enterprise on request, custom contract, not per seat |
| License | Phoenix: Elastic License 2.0 | Commercial |
"—" means we did not find it on the Arize pages listed in Sources. Arize facts checked on 31 Oct 2026.
What Arize Phoenix does
Phoenix describes itself as "open-source AI observability & evaluation". Its GitHub page lists:
- Tracing built on OpenTelemetry.
- Evaluation of LLM outputs.
- Datasets and experiments. Versioned datasets for running and comparing experiments.
- Playground and prompt management.
You can run Phoenix locally or self-host it. Phoenix is licensed under the Elastic License 2.0. For a hosted product, Arize offers Arize AX with a free tier and paid plans.
What Agentiqa does
Agentiqa is built for AI agents that write data into business systems: ERP and procurement suites, CRM, billing.
- Release gates run the agent's key tasks before each release. You describe each task in plain words. The gate runs it in a real browser with a test account and grades each check.
- The record, not only the reply. After each task, the gate checks what changed in the connected system.
- Confirmed regressions. When you rerun the failed tasks, AI Quality Manager reports a step as a regression only if it fails again. Unconfirmed failures are listed separately.
- AI Quality Manager compares each release with the previous one, shows regression candidates, and proposes test updates and new tests. A person on your team approves them.
Each failure comes with a trace, the recording and steps to reproduce.
Where they differ
Phoenix works on spans and scores: what the agent called, in which order, and how good the output was. That is useful for debugging and for comparing prompts or models.
A release gate works on tasks and records. It runs "create the purchase order" with a test account, then checks the connected system. A trace can show a successful create_order call while the system holds:
- an order with a wrong value (wrong data),
- no order at all, with "done" in the reply (hallucinated success),
- two orders after a timeout and a retry (duplicate writes).
When to pick which
- Pick Phoenix if you want open source tracing and evals you can run on your own machine or servers, built on OpenTelemetry.
- Pick Agentiqa if your agent changes records for customers and you want each release checked on its key tasks before it ships.
- Use both if you need both. Phoenix to see and score what the agent does, Agentiqa to check the next version's writes before release.
FAQ
Phoenix's code is public on GitHub under the Elastic License 2.0, and you can run it locally or self-host it. Agentiqa is a commercial product with a free Community Edition.
For tracing and evals, no: Agentiqa does not trace production. It runs an agent's key tasks before each release and checks the records the agent wrote.
Phoenix runs locally. Agentiqa has a Desktop app and a CLI, so you can test apps running on your own machine, including localhost.
If you have no visibility into what your agent does, start with tracing. If your agent already writes into business systems for customers, add release gates on the tasks where a wrong write costs the most.
Sources
Arize: arize.com/phoenix, github.com/Arize-ai/phoenix, arize.com/pricing, checked 31 Oct 2026. Agentiqa: agentiqa.com, Enterprise, Community Edition.
Try it on your own agent
Describe a task in plain words. Agentiqa does it step by step and tells you if it worked. Every failure comes with step-by-step reproduction.
20 runs a month, no credit card.
Your agent writes into ERP, CRM or billing for customers? See Enterprise.