NightOwl vs Laravel Nightwatch Cloud

No. NightOwl runs alongside the official laravel/nightwatch package — it uses the same instrumentation. What NightOwl replaces is the Nightwatch Cloud destination: telemetry goes to your PostgreSQL instead of Nightwatch's servers, and a NightOwl dashboard sits on top.

You don't install it separately. The laravel/nightwatch package is a Composer dependency of the NightOwl agent, so a single composer require nightowl/agent pulls Nightwatch in automatically. Nightwatch handles instrumentation (requests, queries, exceptions, jobs, etc.) and the agent routes that telemetry into your PostgreSQL.

NightOwl is $5/month Hobby (1 app), $15/month Team (up to 3 apps), or $69/month Agency (unlimited apps), all flat — none scale with traffic. Nightwatch Cloud starts at $0 for 300,000 events/month and then charges per event above that, so high-traffic apps pay substantially more over time.

Laravel Nightwatch Cloud has four tiers: Free for up to 300,000 events per month, Pro at $20/month for up to 7.5 million events, Team at $60/month, and Business at $300/month. Above each tier's event cap, billing scales per event. Tier limits and per-event rates are set by Laravel; check nightwatch.laravel.com/pricing for the current numbers.

Yes. Laravel Nightwatch's Free tier covers up to 300,000 events per month at no cost. Once you cross that ceiling, the Pro tier is $20/month for up to 7.5 million events, then Team at $60/month and Business at $300/month. NightOwl doesn't have a free tier; the lowest plan is $5/month Hobby (1 app), but it has no event cap because telemetry is written to a PostgreSQL database you own rather than a vendor meter.

Yes. Keep laravel/nightwatch installed exactly as-is, install the NightOwl agent, point it at your PostgreSQL, and log into the NightOwl dashboard. You can disconnect from Nightwatch Cloud whenever you're ready — your code doesn't change.

In a PostgreSQL database you own (BYOD — bring your own database). NightOwl creates its tables under a nightowl_ prefix in the database you provide — telemetry tables plus issues, comments, activity, alert channels, users, and settings. Retention, backups, and access are entirely yours.

Your data stays in your PostgreSQL — it never lived on NightOwl's servers. Cancelling means you lose access to the dashboard and agent updates, but every table and row remains in your database.

Yes — NightOwl covers all the core Nightwatch watchers: requests, exceptions, queries, jobs, commands, scheduled tasks, cache, mail, notifications, outgoing requests, users and logs. It also adds issue management, alert channels, granular data clearing, and agent instance health monitoring.

Partly. The agent package is open source under MIT — you can read, audit, and modify the code that runs inside your app. The dashboard and backend are commercial and source-available (read-only access under NDA for self-hosted customers). We split it that way so the part touching your infrastructure is fully inspectable, and we can still sustainably maintain the product without a dual-license or pay-to-self-host play.