Cleanup checklist · Datadog list prices read 2026-10-31

Cut your Datadog bill without migrating

If you've got “custom metrics that literally nobody has queried in like 6 months” and “health check logs just burning through our indexed volume”, start there. Migrating can wait. This checklist prices each cleanup lever with Datadog's own list prices and links the Datadog docs that show what's safe to remove.

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Answer: Before you migrate, clean up what you pay Datadog for but never look at. Datadog's list prices (read 2026-10-31): custom metrics $5 per 100 beyond 100 per Infrastructure Pro host, log ingestion $0.10/GB, indexed logs $1.06–$2.50 per million events (3- to 30-day retention), APM $31/host, Infrastructure Pro $15/host billed annually ($18 on-demand). Datadog's own Metrics Summary shows which metrics nobody has queried in 30, 60 or 90 days and which ones sit on a dashboard, monitor, notebook or SLO. That is how you tell what is safe to remove without breaking someone's alert.

Key stats

Custom metrics: $5 per 100 / mo beyond 100 per Infrastructure Pro host
Log ingestion: $0.10 per GB
Indexed logs per 1M events: $1.06 (3-day) · $1.27 (7-day) · $1.70 (15-day) · $2.50 (30-day)
APM: $31 per APM host (150 GB ingested + 1M indexed spans included per host)
Infrastructure Pro: $15 per host billed annually; $18 month-to-month or on-demand
Containers: 5 per Pro host included; then $1/container/mo (annual) or $0.002/container-hour on-demand
Source: datadoghq.com/pricing/list (Billed Annually column unless stated), read 2026-10-31

The cleanup checklist

Work down the list in order: the first steps are reversible and need no code change. Prices are Datadog list prices (Billed Annually) from datadoghq.com/pricing/list, read 2026-10-31. Your contract price may differ.

1. Custom metrics nobody has queried

What you pay: $5 per 100 custom metrics per month beyond 100 per Infrastructure Pro host (200 on Enterprise). The allotment is pooled across your hosts. Billing uses the monthly average of distinct series per hour, so query count and how often you submit data points don't change it (Custom Metrics Billing docs).
Why it grows: a custom metric is a metric name plus each unique tag-value combination. A single high-cardinality tag like user_id or request_id multiplies the count. Histograms and distributions each emit 5 series per tag combination, and adding percentiles to a distribution doubles that.
Find them: open Metrics Summary, then use the Query Activity facet ("not queried in the past 30, 60, or 90 days") together with the Related Assets facet (Metrics Summary docs). To find the tag behind a spike, use the Custom Metrics Tags Cardinality Explorer.
Cut them reversibly: with Metrics without Limits, set an allowlist of tags (or an empty allowlist for unqueried metrics, as Datadog's docs suggest). Check the Estimated New Volume before you save, and confirm the drop 24 hours later on Plan & Usage. Configured metrics also count toward ingested custom metrics at $0.10 per 100 beyond the ingested allotment.

2. Health-check logs burning indexed volume

What you pay: $0.10/GB to ingest, then $1.06 to $2.50 per million indexed events depending on retention.
Option A: index exclusion filter (reversible). Excluded logs aren't indexed, but you still pay to ingest them, and they still flow to Live Tail, archives and log-based metrics. You can toggle a filter on or off and sample anywhere from 0% to 100% (Log Indexes docs). The docs' own example excludes 95% of 2xx nginx access logs.
Option B: drop at the Agent. A log_processing_rules rule of type exclude_at_match stops the log from being sent at all, so you skip the ingestion charge too. Datadog's docs show a global rule named exclude_healthcheck (Advanced Log Collection docs). Logs dropped this way are gone for good.
Put a ceiling on it: an index daily quota hard-limits how many events get indexed per day and fires an event when you hit the limit or a warning threshold.

3. Retention you forgot you picked

Indexed logs per million events: $1.06 (3-day), $1.27 (7-day), $1.70 (15-day), $2.50 (30-day). Split noisy sources into their own index with shorter retention. Datadog recommends multiple indexes when you need different retentions or quotas (docs).
Low-value logs you have to keep for months can go to an archive or Flex Logs. Flex Logs storage is $0.05 per million events stored per month on the list page. Check that the query trade-offs suit you first.

4. Span ingestion and retention

APM is $31 per APM host. Each host includes 150 GB of ingested spans and 1M indexed spans per month, pooled across APM hosts. Above that you pay $0.10/GB ingested and $1.70 per million indexed spans (15-day retention) (datadoghq.com/pricing).
Ingestion is controlled on the Ingestion Control page. Retention filters decide which spans get indexed. The APM Estimated Usage dashboard shows where the volume comes from (Trace Pipeline docs). Tighten custom retention filters before you touch sampling, so you keep error and high-latency traces.

5. How hosts and containers are counted

Hosts are metered hourly. The billable count is the high-water mark of the lowest 99% of hours, so the top 1% of hours is ignored. Non-reporting hosts don't count (Billing docs).
If you install the Agent inside every container, each container is billed as a host. Datadog recommends one containerized Agent per host.
Containers: 5 per Pro host (10 per Enterprise host) are included and averaged across your infrastructure. Pause containers and Agent containers don't count. Fargate is billed on the number of tasks or pods running at the same time (Containers Billing docs).

6. Committed (annual) vs on-demand

List prices from the same page: Infrastructure Pro $15 annual vs $18 month-to-month or on-demand; APM $31 vs $36; 15-day indexed logs $1.70 (annual) vs $2.04 (month-to-month) vs $2.55 (on-demand) per million.
Usage beyond your committed quantity and allotments is metered on-demand (see the containers billing FAQ for how). Plan & Usage → Subscription Details shows the contract price and on-demand price for each committed product. Commit only to your steady baseline, after the cleanup.

Worked example (illustration only)

Example, not data: the inputs below are made up to show the math. They are not from any customer and are not an average. Prices are the Datadog list prices above (annual), read 2026-10-31.

Inputs: 20 Infrastructure Pro hosts, 6,000 indexed custom metrics, 300 GB/mo of logs of which 30 GB are health checks, 400M indexed log events/mo at 15-day retention of which 100M are health checks, 10 APM hosts, 2,500 GB ingested spans, 30M indexed spans. Cleanup: exclude 1,500 custom metrics that are unqueried for 90 days and on no asset, drop health-check logs at the Agent, and move the remaining logs to 7-day retention.

Before line	Example usage × list price	$/mo
Infrastructure Pro	20 hosts × $15	$300
Custom metrics	6,000 indexed − 2,000 included (100/host) = 4,000 × $5/100	$200
Log ingestion	300 GB × $0.10	$30
Indexed logs (15-day)	400M events × $1.70/M	$680
APM hosts	10 × $31	$310
Span ingestion over allotment	2,500 GB − 1,500 GB included = 1,000 × $0.10	$100
Indexed spans over allotment (15-day)	30M − 10M included = 20M × $1.70/M	$34
Total		$1,654

After cleanup line	Example usage × list price	$/mo
Infrastructure Pro	unchanged	$300
Custom metrics	4,500 indexed after 1,500 unqueried, asset-free series are excluded	$125
Log ingestion	270 GB after health-check lines are dropped at the Agent	$27
Indexed logs (7-day)	300M events (health checks no longer indexed) × $1.27/M	$381
APM hosts	unchanged	$310
Span ingestion over allotment	unchanged	$100
Indexed spans over allotment (15-day)	unchanged	$34
Total		$1,277

Example difference: $377/mo ($1,654 → $1,277) on these made-up inputs, with nothing migrated. In the same example, paying on-demand list prices instead of annual for the 20 infra hosts and 10 APM hosts would add $110/mo.

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What buyers ask (in their words)

“how do you even figure out what's safe to remove without breaking someone's alert?”: use Related Assets (monitors, dashboards, notebooks, SLOs) plus Query Activity (30/60/90 days) in Metrics Summary, and change tag configurations rather than deleting code. See step 1.
“health check logs just burning through our indexed volume”: use an exclusion filter to stop indexing them, or an Agent exclude_at_match rule to stop ingesting them too. See step 2.
“our datadog bill is literally higher than our aws hosting bill”: price each line above against your own usage first, then compare alternatives on the same usage with the audit.

Quotes are from public r/devops and r/ChoosingVendors threads (2026).

FAQ

How do I cut my Datadog bill without migrating?

Before you migrate, clean up what you pay Datadog for but never look at. Datadog's list prices (read 2026-10-31): custom metrics $5 per 100 beyond 100 per Infrastructure Pro host, log ingestion $0.10/GB, indexed logs $1.06–$2.50 per million events (3- to 30-day retention), APM $31/host, Infrastructure Pro $15/host billed annually ($18 on-demand). Datadog's own Metrics Summary shows which metrics nobody has queried in 30, 60 or 90 days and which ones sit on a dashboard, monitor, notebook or SLO. That is how you tell what is safe to remove without breaking someone's alert.

How do I figure out what's safe to remove without breaking someone's alert?

Use Metrics Summary in Datadog. The Query Activity facet lists metrics not queried in the past 30, 60 or 90 days, and the Related Assets facet lists metrics used on dashboards, notebooks, monitors and SLOs. Datadog's docs say a metric counts as used as long as it exists on an asset, even if nobody queries it. Start with metrics that are unqueried for 90 days and have no related assets. Prefer a Metrics without Limits tag configuration over deleting code, because you can revert it with "Allow all tags".

Do Datadog exclusion filters stop me paying for health-check logs?

Partly. An index exclusion filter stops those logs being indexed ($1.06–$2.50 per million events by retention), but they are still ingested ($0.10/GB), and they still show in Live Tail, archives and log-based metrics. To avoid the ingestion charge too, drop them at the Agent with a log_processing_rules exclude_at_match rule. Datadog's own docs use a "healthcheck" pattern as the example. Logs dropped at the Agent are never sent, so you can't get them back.

What does Datadog charge for custom metrics?

$5 per 100 custom metrics per month beyond the allotment (100 per Infrastructure Pro host, 200 per Enterprise host, pooled across the account), billed on the monthly average of distinct series per hour. If you configure a metric with Metrics without Limits, its ingested series are also counted, at $0.10 per 100 beyond the ingested allotment (datadoghq.com/pricing/list, read 2026-10-31).

Is my Datadog bill really higher than my AWS bill?

Sometimes it is, and buyers say so in public threads ("our datadog bill is literally higher than our aws hosting bill"). We have no data on how common that is, so we won't give you a percentage. Price your own usage line by line with the checklist below or the free audit, then decide whether a cleanup is enough or a migration is worth the work.

Will you tell me how much I will save?

Not as a percentage. We do not publish invented savings stats. The worked example below uses Datadog list prices on made-up inputs. Your own result depends on your contract and usage. The free audit prices the usage you enter against public list prices.

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Data: Datadog cleanup checklist, Datadog list prices read 2026-10-31. Source: O11y Watch (https://o11y-watch.pages.dev). License: CC BY 4.0. Please attribute "O11y Watch" with a link to https://o11y-watch.pages.dev/.