Appmap

AppMap builds developer tooling that records how an application actually behaves at runtime and turns those traces into inspectable maps and diagrams. Its language agents instrument code running on developer machines and in CI to capture function calls, SQL queries, HTTP calls, exceptions, timing, code objects and their relationships. The resulting traces are rendered as sequence diagrams, call trees, flame graphs and code-object views inside VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, and can also be produced from the command line via the AppMap CLI.

Beyond visualization, the product compares behavior across revisions: it records fresh traces after a change, diffs them against the base revision, and reports what moved — API changes, query changes, new dependencies, performance regressions such as N+1 or repeated SQL, and security or correctness problems including authorization gaps, exceptions, unsafe calls and unexpected side effects. Findings and a behavioral write-up can be posted into the pull request so reviewers see behavioral change rather than only code diffs. The company frames its positioning against production observability: broad, sampled telemetry in production versus deep, code-level execution capture in development before merge.

More recently AppMap has oriented the same trace data toward AI-assisted development. Coding agents query the traces through MCP, and the vendor states compatibility with Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf and other MCP-capable agents. An earlier in-editor assistant, Navie, answers questions about a codebase and can be pointed at several LLM providers, including GitHub Copilot's model, OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Gemini and local models. Deployment options include local, self-hosted and airgapped installations, organization-wide Git and CI controls, and sanitized repository-owned "Gold Traces."

Founding story

AppMap was founded by Elizabeth Lawler (CEO) and Kevin Gilpin (CTO), who had previously co-founded Conjur, the secrets-management company acquired by CyberArk; Lawler subsequently served as VP of DevOps Security at CyberArk and earlier was Chief Data Officer at Generation Health, acquired by CVS Caremark. One report dates the founding to 2020 under CEO Elizabeth Lawler. The premise was that developers should be able to see software behavior as they write code; as Lawler told TechCrunch, "When we don't know how our software works, we're making best guesses when we write code."

Business model

AppMap distributes free editor extensions and open-source language agents to build developer adoption, then monetizes through paid tiers and organizational deployments. Community includes Gold Traces and team Git workflows at no cost; a Professional tier adds priority support for individual developers; Enterprise adds organization-wide deployment, configuration, controls, integrations, training and support. Enterprise buyers engage the company directly.

Tiered software licensing: a free Community tier, a paid Professional tier for individual developers with priority support, and a paid Enterprise tier covering organizational deployment, controls, integrations, training and support.

Traction

The company reports approximately 140,000 installs across the VS Code and JetBrains marketplaces and a developer community exceeding 100,000, with five-star marketplace ratings. At the time of its 2023 funding announcement, its language-specific libraries had been distributed to codebases in 160 countries with more than 1 million downloads. Public GitHub repositories show ongoing activity across 67 repositories, with the VS Code extension at 156 stars, the Ruby client at 101, the Java agent at 88 and the JS client libraries at 53. A third-party profile estimates annual revenue in the $1M-$10M range as of July 2026. Named users cited by the company include developers at Cognitive Zen, CodeCrafters, Lombard Odier Bank and MaxMine.

Latest developments

Current positioning centers on runtime evidence for AI-assisted development: AppMap records traces during development and CI, compares behavior between base and head revisions, and writes a behavioral review into the pull request for consumption by both developers and coding agents over MCP, with named compatibility for Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and Windsurf. The company reports approximately 140,000 editor installs and a community of more than 100,000 developers, and publishes an internal benchmark in which agents supplied with AppMap traces reached 100% root-cause accuracy under a three-tool-call limit versus 28% for source-only agents, using 3.4 times less model spend. A July 2025 partnership with MongoDB Atlas targets MongoDB deployment performance tuning.