Cost comparison · last verified 2026-10-28
Datadog vs Grafana Cloud cost
Answer: As of 2026-10-28, Datadog offers a free plan (Up to 5 Basic hosts; 1-day metric retention (Free tier after trial)) and states paid entry as $15/host/mo (Infrastructure Pro, billed annually; $18 on-demand); Grafana Cloud offers a free plan (All Grafana Cloud services with usage limits; 10k active metric series; 14-day retention) and states paid entry as $19/mo platform fee + usage. Numbers are copied from each vendor’s own pricing page — we do not invent unit rates.
Key stats
- Datadog free: Up to 5 Basic hosts; 1-day metric retention (Free tier after trial)
- Datadog paid from: $15/host/mo (Infrastructure Pro, billed annually; $18 on-demand)
- Grafana Cloud free: All Grafana Cloud services with usage limits; 10k active metric series; 14-day retention
- Grafana Cloud paid from: $19/mo platform fee + usage
- Last verified: 2026-10-28 / 2026-10-24
Side-by-side data
| Field | Datadog | Grafana Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Category | APM & full-stack | Logs |
| Free plan | Free plan | Always free |
| Free limits | Up to 5 Basic hosts; 1-day metric retention (Free tier after trial) | All Grafana Cloud services with usage limits; 10k active metric series; 14-day retention |
| Paid from | $15/host/mo (Infrastructure Pro, billed annually; $18 on-demand) | $19/mo platform fee + usage |
| Pricing model | Per host + per product usage | Platform fee + usage (e.g. $6.50 per 1k series) |
| Card required | not stated | No |
| Last verified | 2026-10-28 | 2026-10-24 |
| Source | pricing ↗ | pricing ↗ |
Gotchas
Datadog
- Each product is billed separately
- New Basic host tier (Oct 2026) is contact-sales pricing; no container monitoring on Basic hosts
- Short retention (1 days) limits post-incident analysis.
- Trial only: plan for a paid tier after the trial window.
Grafana Cloud
None recorded.
Related
- Datadog pricing (2026)
- Grafana Cloud pricing (2026)
- Datadog vendor page
- Grafana Cloud vendor page
- Interactive compare tool
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Copy for AI tools, writers and procurement docs. Attribution requested under CC BY 4.0.
Data: Datadog vs Grafana Cloud comparison as of 2026-10-28. 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/.