Independently operated. Not affiliated with Datadog, New Relic, Grafana Labs, Dynatrace, Splunk, or Elastic. Pricing sourced from public pages and may not reflect current rates. Verify on each vendor's pricing page before purchasing.
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Tool

Cloud monitoring cost calculator

Verified June 2026

Move the sliders. See seven vendor bills update in real time. Built to be a starting point for budget conversations and vendor negotiations, not a quote.

Your Environment

Move the dials. Watch costs change.

Pre-filled scenarios

Estimated monthly cost (USD list)

sorted: cheapest first

Netdatacheapest
$450
infra $450apm $0logs $0metrics $0

Flat per-node vendor bill. Data stays on your own infrastructure, so add your storage and ops for true cost of ownership, and note it is lighter on distributed tracing than the APM suites.

Grafana Cloud
$1,160
infra $19apm $0logs $979metrics $163
Elastic Cloud
$1,370
infra $800apm $300logs $270metrics $0
New Relic
$2,901
infra $891apm $0logs $2,010metrics $0
Splunk Cloud
$3,750
infra $1,500apm $2,250logs $0metrics $0

Not comparable on logs. This is the published per-host Observability Cloud rate only: Splunk publishes no ingest rate on any of its pricing options, so the log line here is missing rather than zero, and on a log-heavy estate it is usually the largest line on the invoice. Get it quoted before comparing this total with the per-GB vendors.

Dynatrace
$4,800
infra $1,450apm $2,900logs $450metrics $0
Datadog
$19,010
infra $1,800apm $1,750logs $15,450metrics $10

Potential annual saving

$222,720switching Datadog → Netdata

Assumptions and methodology

All figures use vendor list pricing, re-verified for Datadog, New Relic, Grafana Cloud and Dynatrace in June 2026 (Elastic and Splunk as of April 2026; Netdata as of September 2026). Netdata prices a flat rate per node with no data-volume charge, and its data stays on your own infrastructure, so its figure is the vendor bill, not full cost of ownership. Negotiated, committed-use, and enterprise rates differ. The calculator is an estimator, not a quote.

  • Datadog: per-host infra, per-host APM, log ingest plus indexed events (assumed 4M events per GB), custom metric overage above 100/host included.
  • New Relic: data ingest model, ~0.5 GB/host/day baseline telemetry plus user log volume, 100 GB monthly free tier, seat costs at scale.
  • Grafana Cloud: active-series model (~150 series/host plus custom metrics), 10K series free, log ingest with 50 GB free.
  • Dynatrace: Dynatrace Platform Subscription per-host capability units; full-stack APM unit cost.
  • Elastic Cloud: resource-based; per-host equivalents extrapolated from deployment-size pricing.
  • Splunk Cloud: log ingest dominant; APM separate.
  • Retention multiplier applied to log indexing/storage cost only.

Verify each vendor's current pricing on its official page before purchasing.

What this tool does

An honest, vendor-neutral estimate

Most online monitoring calculators are run by a vendor pushing its own product. This one applies the same scenarios to seven platforms and shows the differences side by side. We do not score, rank, or recommend a winner.

7 vendors

Datadog, New Relic, Grafana Cloud, Dynatrace, Splunk, Elastic, Netdata. All compared on the same inputs.

Live updates

Sliders update every vendor's cost on every input change. No submit button, no email gate.

List pricing

Public list rates only, with a clearly stated formula per vendor. No negotiated discounts assumed.

Pricing formulas

The exact arithmetic behind each vendor

Transparent so you can sanity-check every number. Adjust inputs and audit the output line items in the calculator above. All rates link back to the vendor's pricing page.

Datadog

(hosts x $18) + (apm hosts x $35) + (logs GB/mo x $0.10) + (logs GB/mo x 4M events x $1.70/M x retention multiplier) + (custom metrics overage x $0.05/100 x hosts)

New Relic

max(0, (hosts x 0.5 GB/day x 30 + apm hosts x 0.3 GB/day x 30 + log GB/mo) - 100 GB) x $0.40/GB x retention multiplier + seat costs at scale ($99/seat above 10 hosts)

Grafana Cloud

max(0, (hosts x 150 series + hosts x custom metrics) - 10K) / 1,000 x $6.50 + max(0, log GB/mo - 50) x $0.45 x retention multiplier + $19/mo platform fee when billable

Dynatrace

(non-APM hosts x $29) + (apm hosts x $58) + (log GB/mo x $0.20) x retention multiplier. Full-Stack at $58 per 8 GiB host already includes everything in Infrastructure Monitoring at $29, so a full-stack host is charged once rather than twice.

Elastic Cloud

(hosts x $8) + (apm hosts x $6) + (log GB/mo x $0.12) x retention multiplier. Caveat: Elastic publishes no per-host rate at all, since Hosted is resource-based and Serverless is per-GB volume-tiered, so the two per-host figures here are rough equivalents rather than vendor rates. This is the least reliable row in the table.

Splunk Observability Cloud

(hosts x $15) + (apm hosts x $45). The Infrastructure edition is $15/host/mo and App & Infra, the tier that adds APM, is $60, so APM is the $45 step up. Logs are excluded rather than zero: Splunk publishes no ingest rate on any of its activity-based, ingest, workload or entity pricing options, so no honest log figure can be modelled here.

Netdata

hosts x $4.50 (Business, billed annually). Flat per node with metrics, logs, dashboards and retention included and no per-GB, cardinality, seat or retention charges, so log volume and custom metrics do not move this figure. Community is free up to 5 nodes. Storage runs on your own infrastructure, so this is the vendor bill rather than full cost of ownership.

Verify before signing

Vendor pricing changes. Always cross-check the final number against the vendor's pricing page or a sales quote before purchasing or renewing.

Frequently asked

Is this calculator accurate?
It is a list-pricing estimator, not a quote. Vendors negotiate, bundle, and discount with committed-use contracts. Use the output as a starting point for vendor conversations and verify each vendor's published pricing before signing.
Why does the Splunk row show no log cost?
Because Splunk does not publish one. Its pricing page offers activity-based, ingest, workload and entity pricing and lists a rate for none of them, so any per-GB figure for Splunk would be our invention rather than Splunk's price. The Splunk row here is therefore the published per-host Observability Cloud rate only (Infrastructure $15, and App & Infra $60 for the tier that adds APM), with the log line marked as excluded rather than filled with a guess. On a log-heavy estate that missing line is usually the largest single item on the invoice, so treat the Splunk total as a floor and get the data line quoted. This is also why comparing it directly against the per-GB vendors in the table understates Splunk.
Why does Grafana Cloud free tier matter?
10K active series plus 50 GB logs plus 50 GB traces covers a meaningful portion of small-to-medium teams at zero cost. The calculator subtracts these allowances before charging.
How is APM calculated?
We multiply the per-host APM rate (where applicable) by the percentage of hosts with APM enabled. New Relic and Grafana Cloud bill APM through their primary meter, so APM line-items appear in the data ingest or active-series totals rather than as a separate APM charge.

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