Datadog pricing, free tier and alternatives (2026)

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Overview

Datadog is a hosted monitoring platform built around an agent that runs on each server or Kubernetes node. From that base it sells many separate products: infrastructure metrics, APM and distributed tracing, log management, synthetic tests, real user monitoring, database monitoring, profiling, CI visibility, cloud cost management and security. Everything is tied together with tags, so a dashboard can move from a host to its traces and logs.

Pricing is per product. Infrastructure starts at $15 per host a month on annual billing, APM adds $31 per host, and logs are charged both for ingestion ($0.10/GB) and for each million events you index, with the price rising with retention. Custom metrics, containers and serverless functions each have their own meters.

The free Infrastructure tier covers up to five hosts with one day of metric retention, enough to evaluate the product but not to investigate yesterday's incident. Before adopting it, estimate host counts, custom metric cardinality and log volume, because these drive the bill far more than the headline host price.

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Pricing and plans

Free tier

Infrastructure Free: core metric collection and dashboards for up to 5 hosts with 1-day metric retention.

At the limit Not stated The vendor does not say what happens at the limit, or we have not found it yet.

Plan	Price	What you get
Infrastructure Free	$0	Up to 5 hosts, 1-day metric retention
Infrastructure Pro	$15/host/mo annual, $18 monthly	Host metrics, integrations, dashboards, alerting
Infrastructure Enterprise	$23/host/mo annual, $27 monthly	Adds advanced features over Pro
APM	$31/host/mo annual, $36 monthly	Distributed tracing; APM Pro $35, APM Enterprise $40 annual
Log Management	$0.10/GB ingested + from $1.06 per 1M indexed events	Indexed price depends on retention (3 to 30 days)
Database Monitoring	$70/database host/mo annual	Query-level database metrics

Every product is billed separately and most have annual, month-to-month and on-demand rates; the list page shows the US site. Custom metrics cost $5 per 100 per month, containers $1 each beyond host allotments, and hosts are billed on the high-water mark of the lower 99% of hourly counts. Bits AI features are billed in AI credits. A free trial is offered for paid products. Compliance list is from Datadog's security pages as commonly cited; PCI and HIPAA support is stated on the log pricing page.

Source: www.datadoghq.com/pricing/list/ · prices as published, excluding tax.

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What it does

Infrastructure monitoring: Agent-based host, container and cloud metrics with over 1,000 integrations and prebuilt dashboards.
APM and tracing: Distributed tracing per APM host, with indexed spans kept 7 to 30 days at extra cost.
Log management: Ingest, parse and index logs; Flex Logs keep logs up to 15 months without rehydration.
Synthetics and RUM: API and browser tests plus real user monitoring and session replay, priced per test run and per session.
Database monitoring: Query-level performance data for database hosts at $70 per host a month on annual billing.
Bits AI: AI agents that investigate alerts, answer questions and propose code fixes, billed in AI credits.

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Strengths and limitations

Strengths

Covers infrastructure, APM, logs, frontend and security in one account.
Very large integration catalogue for cloud services, databases and middleware.
Signals are correlated by tags, so moving from a host to its traces and logs is quick.
Mature enough for large, regulated organisations, with PCI and HIPAA support for logs.

Limitations

The free tier is limited to 5 hosts and 1 day of metric retention.
Each product is metered separately (hosts, GB, indexed events, custom metrics), which makes costs hard to predict.
Custom metrics are billed at $5 per 100 per month, so high-cardinality tags raise the bill quickly.
No self-hosted option.

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Who it suits

Good for

Companies running many services on cloud infrastructure or Kubernetes
Teams that want one vendor for metrics, traces, logs and security
Enterprises needing compliance and support contracts

Look elsewhere if

Hobby projects and small apps, where the per-host and per-GB pricing is out of proportion
Teams that want to self-host or avoid vendor lock-in

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Alternatives to Datadog

Tool	From	Free option
Rollbar Error tracking and session replay	$15.83/mo	Free tier
Grafana Cloud Hosted metrics, logs, traces and dashboards	$19/mo	Free tier
BugSnag Error and stability monitoring for mobile and web	$20/mo	Free tier
New Relic Full-stack observability platform	$10/mo	Free tier
Checkly Synthetic and uptime monitoring as code	$24/mo	Free tier
Sentry Error tracking and application monitoring	$26/mo	Free tier

All monitoring, uptime and error tracking →

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Questions

Is Datadog free?

There is a free Infrastructure tier for up to 5 hosts with 1-day metric retention. APM, logs and most other products are paid.

How much does Datadog cost per host?

Infrastructure Pro is $15 per host a month on annual billing or $18 month-to-month; APM adds $31 per host on annual billing.

How is Datadog log pricing calculated?

You pay $0.10 per GB ingested plus a charge per million indexed log events that rises with retention, from $1.06 for 3 days to $2.50 for 30 days on annual billing.

Does Datadog support OpenTelemetry?

Yes, it accepts OpenTelemetry data in addition to its own agent and tracing libraries.

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