scout-apm

What it is and what it does

Scout APM is an application performance monitoring agent for Python web applications and workers. Once installed and configured, it automatically instruments Django, Flask, Celery, and several other frameworks to collect performance metrics and detailed transaction traces, which are then sent to Scout's cloud service for analysis and visualization.

The agent works by wrapping framework components and system calls to measure response times, database queries, and other performance-critical operations. It requires an active Scout APM account (or Heroku Addon) to view the collected data. For frameworks not in the built-in integration list, Scout provides an instrumentation API for manual integration.

Use it for:

• Monitor response times and identify slow endpoints in Django or Flask production applications.
• Track Celery worker task performance and detect long-running or failing background jobs.
• Collect transaction traces to diagnose database query bottlenecks and N+1 problems.
• Correlate application performance with deployment changes and infrastructure metrics.
• Profile custom business logic using Scout's instrumentation API for unsupported frameworks.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Scout APM is a Python application performance monitoring agent that collects detailed performance metrics and transaction traces for Django, Flask, Celery, and other web frameworks.

Yes, if you are running Django, Flask, Celery, or one of the other supported frameworks and have an active Scout APM account. The package is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, low install friction, and a permissive license. The main prerequisite is a Scout service subscription to view the collected data; without it, the agent will collect metrics but have nowhere to send them.

Install

scout-apm on PyPI

pip install scout-apm

uv add scout-apm

poetry add scout-apm

Installing scout-apm

Before you install

Low install friction with a pure-Python wheel and five common runtime dependencies. The package is actively maintained with a recent commit on 2026-08-10, and supports current Python versions (3.8 through 3.12).

License in practice

MIT license is permissive, allowing use in commercial and open-source projects with minimal restrictions beyond attribution.

Quickstart

pip install scout-apm

import scout_apm.api
scout_apm.api.Config.set(name="MyApp", key="<SCOUT_KEY>")
scout_apm.api.Config.set(monitor=True)

Requires a Scout APM account and API key; Python 3.8 or later; the agent needs to be configured with valid credentials before it will transmit data.

Verify before relying

• Whether the agent has measurable performance overhead on typical workloads.
• How much data retention and query capability the free tier of Scout APM service provides.
• Whether instrumentation API works equally well for frameworks outside the listed integrations.

Package facts

Evidence: scout_apm-3.5.3-py3-none-any.whl

Keywords: apm, performance monitoring, development

Tags

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