Foxglove is built to visualize and debug recorded robotics data — ROS bags, 3D scenes, video, logs, all time-synced — and for that kind of deep visual debugging it's best-in-class. It's where a robotics engineer goes to understand what a robot saw and did on a particular run. Plexus is built for the other half of the job: operating the fleet in production. It's a finished platform — storage, dashboards that generate themselves from the telemetry, threshold/event/offline monitors with notification routing, and a full audit trail on every alert — with a ⌘K terminal for querying the fleet in plain language.
Foxglove is a robotics multimodal visualization. Foxglove visualizes and replays recorded robotics data; Plexus runs the fleet's live metrics, dashboards, and alerts. Different halves of the job, often run together. This page is written by Plexus, so read it with that in mind — we’ve tried to be straight about where Foxglove is the better choice. Last updated July 2026.
If the question is “why did this robot behave this way on this run,” Foxglove's multimodal viewer is the right tool, and Plexus doesn't try to be. If the question is “how do I watch my whole fleet's health day to day,” that's Plexus — live dashboards, monitors, and alert history, out of the box. The two cover different halves, and plenty of robotics teams run both.
● full · ◐ partial · ○ not today
| Capability | Plexus | Foxglove |
|---|---|---|
Multimodal visualization (3D / video / ROS) Foxglove is purpose-built for this; Plexus is not a robotics visualization tool. | ○ | ● |
ROS / rosbag ecosystem and recorded-data replay Deep ROS integration and replay of recordings are Foxglove's home turf. | ○ | ● |
Deep visual debugging of a single run Understanding what one robot saw and did on a recording is exactly Foxglove's job. | ○ | ● |
Fleet-monitoring platform out of the box Foxglove is a visualization and debugging tool, not a monitoring platform. | ● | ○ |
Built-in storage and ingestion for live fleet telemetry Foxglove centers on recordings; Plexus stores live fleet telemetry with 3-year raw retention and streams it to dashboards over WebSockets. | ● | ◐ |
Threshold, event, and offline monitors with routing Foxglove visualizes; monitoring and alerting is Plexus's job — per-monitor email, Slack, or webhook routing included. | ● | ○ |
Per-alert audit trail with verdict capture Every Plexus alert keeps a timeline and a verdict, so the alert history is something you can audit. | ● | ○ |
Connects to an existing datastore Plexus reads Postgres, TimescaleDB, MySQL, or ClickHouse in place. | ● | ◐ |
Pick Foxglove Pick Foxglove to visualize and debug recorded robotics data — 3D, video, ROS — where its multimodal viewer is best-in-class and Plexus doesn't compete.
Pick Plexus Pick Plexus to operate a robot fleet in production — storage, auto-generated dashboards, monitors with routing and offline detection, and auditable alert history in one platform — rather than trying to run live fleet monitoring out of a visualization tool.
For monitoring a fleet, yes — Plexus is the platform: storage, auto-generated dashboards, monitors, and alert history. For multimodal visual debugging of recorded ROS, 3D, or video data, Foxglove is its own thing and far better at it. The two cover different halves and robotics teams often run both.
No. Multimodal robotics visualization is Foxglove's strength. Plexus is the monitoring platform — live metrics, dashboards, monitors, and alert history at fleet scale — not a robotics viewer.
A finished operations layer: dashboards that generate themselves from the telemetry, threshold/event/offline monitors with per-monitor notification routing, a full per-alert audit trail, live streaming views, and a plain-language ⌘K terminal — out of the box, with storage included or on the datastore you already run.