Frequently asked questions

General

What is Scout Monitoring?

Scout Monitoring is application performance monitoring that helps developers find and fix performance issues before customers ever see them. With real-time alerting, a developer-centric UI, and tracing that ties bottlenecks directly to source code, Scout helps teams spend less time debugging and more time building. It supports Ruby, Python, PHP, and Elixir applications with a unified view of performance, errors, and logs. Simple pricing and setup in under five minutes.

What is a transaction?

A single web request or execution of a single background job. Scout's SDKs allow you to ignore specific requests or sample based on probability. See language-specific docs for details.

How do I install Scout?

Installation typically takes about 5 minutes. Run the Scout CLI wizard with `npx @scout_apm/wizard`, or add the gem or package for your language, set your API key, and deploy. Scout auto-instruments your application with no additional configuration required.

What is Scout's performance overhead?

Our open-sourced benchmarks show the Scout agent adds approximately 2.2% overhead for a representative web endpoint, which is substantially less than comparable monitoring tools.

What type of support is available?

We offer email and Discord support during business hours. When you reach out, you are talking directly to the engineers who build and run Scout.

What data does Scout collect?

Scout collects timing information from instrumentation, gems and packages used by your application, transaction traces (URL, sanitized SQL), process memory and CPU usage, and error counts. Query parameters are sanitized before transmission and all data is sent over TLS.

Is it safe to run Scout alongside my current APM library?

Yes. Many teams run Scout alongside an existing tool during evaluation. Scout's agent is lightweight and won't interfere with other monitoring libraries.

Are Scout's agents open source?

Yes. Scout's agents for Ruby, Python, PHP, and Elixir are publicly available on GitHub. We welcome contributions, bug reports, and feedback.

Does Scout support SSO and SAML?

Yes. Scout supports SAML-based SSO for enterprise plans, with user provisioning available. Contact us to get set up.

Does Scout offer discounts for open source projects?

Yes. If you maintain a publicly available project under an open source license, Scout offers free access up to our Large plan. Send us a link to your repo and a brief description and we will get you set up.

Can Scout Monitoring be used in HIPAA-compliant environments?

Scout's agent can be safely used in HIPAA-compliant environments. Our services process trace data and IP addresses, not PHI or other sensitive information. For teams with specific HIPAA concerns, we work closely with you to ensure the agent is configured properly. We can also execute a Business Associate Agreement on request. Scout is SOC 2 Type II certified and audited annually by an independent third party.

Billing & Plans

Does Scout offer custom plans?

Yes. Scout's pricing scales as your transaction volume increases. We recommend starting with the free trial to get a sense of your traffic, and we can help find the right fit from there. You can also book a time to talk through a plan that works for your app at calendly.com/scoutapm/custom-plan-discussion.

Is there a discount for annual billing?

Yes. Annual plans include a 10% discount compared to monthly billing.

What forms of payment do you accept?

We accept Visa, MasterCard, and American Express on all plans. Invoicing is available for enterprise customers.

Do I need to sign a contract?

No contracts. You can cancel at any time.

What happens when I hit the transaction limit on my plan?

Once you hit the monthly limit, additional transactions are not recorded until the start of the next billing cycle. You can upgrade your plan at any time for additional volume. Our free tier includes 300,000 transactions per month.

Error Monitoring

How is error volume calculated for billing?

The free plan includes 5,000 error events per month. Additional volume is $19/mo per 50,000 events.

Can I use Error Monitoring without Scout's APM features?

Our Error Monitoring packages depend on the base Scout agent, so this is not entirely possible. That said, you can sign up for a free Scout account and configure Error Monitoring from there.

Which languages and frameworks does Error Monitoring support?

Error Monitoring is available for Ruby, Python, PHP, and Elixir applications.

Can I customize which errors get tracked?

Yes. Scout makes it easy to filter errors by severity level, error type, or custom attributes. You can also set up ignore rules for known issues.

Log Management

We send a lot of logs. Can we limit or filter what we send?

Yes. Scout makes it easy to send only logs of a certain severity or higher. For example, you could send WARNING and above.

What languages does Scout Log Management support?

Log Management currently supports Ruby and Python applications.

Can I use Log Management without enabling the APM agent?

Our Log Management packages depend on the base Scout agent, so this is not entirely possible. You can sign up for a free Scout account and configure Log Management from there.

What happens if I exceed 30 GB of log data in a billing cycle?

Log storage above the included 30 GB is billed in arrears as on-demand usage at $0.46/GB.

MCP Server

What AI Assistants are supported?

Anything that can work with Model Context Protocol running locally. Currently, this includes Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code / Copilot, Windsurf, Cline/Roo, Amp, and more than we can keep up with, which is why MCP exists.

Is there a remote MCP server available?

Yes, Scout offers both a local and a remote hosted MCP server. The remote server lets you connect your AI assistant to your Scout data without running anything locally.

Does using Scout MCP have any associated cost?

There are no additional costs from Scout. The local server relies on the API access included in your Scout Monitoring account. Of course, calls to the Scout MCP result in tokens processed by your AI assistant of choice, so there is an indirect cost on that side.

What data does the Scout MCP server have access to?

The Scout MCP server has read-only access to insight, error, metric, and trace data collected by the Scout agent. It cannot change anything about your Scout Monitoring account. Log data will be available soon.