Teams look past Datadog when the bill is the sum of many per-host and per-volume meters, when a renewal can add up to 9 percent or more, or when they want open source or one flat rate per gigabyte. They go to SigNoz, Grafana and Coralogix for cost control, and to New Relic or Dynatrace for another full suite.
Visibility in our rankings can be paid for. Payment moves a vendor's position within
the shortlist; it never adds a vendor, and it never changes a word of the review or of this page. The first three alternatives
go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the
established names follow in their ranked order. How it works:
placement disclosure · editorial process.
What each alternative does differently
1. SigNoz
OpenTelemetry-native logs, traces and metrics, self-hosted or cloud · United States
SigNoz is OpenTelemetry-native and charges $0.30 per GB for logs and traces and $0.10 per million metric samples, with no user or host pricing. The Community edition is free to self-host. It has a Datadog dashboard migration tool but a much smaller product range, with no security suite.
Switch from Datadog if you want open source and one published per-GB price instead of host meters.
Pricing: SigNoz Cloud Teams starts at $49 a month including $49 of usage, then logs and traces are $0.30 per GB ingested and metrics $0.10 per million samples, with no user-based or host-based pricing. Enterprise starts at $4,000 a month with dedicated cloud, bring-your-own-cloud or self-hosted support. The Community edition is free to self-host. (free trial)
Full review: #14 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit SigNoz →
2. Coralogix
Cost-optimized observability that routes data by business value · Israel
Coralogix publishes a per-GB rate with every feature included: logs $0.42, traces $0.16 and metrics $0.06, and keeps archived data in your own storage bucket. Data is routed to tiers by value, so the saving depends on how well you set the pipeline. It is hosted only.
Switch from Datadog if you want per-GB prices with features included and your archive in your own bucket.
Pricing: Usage-based per GB with all features included, published: logs from $0.42/GB, traces $0.16/GB, metrics $0.06/GB, with no per-host, per-user or per-query charges. Archived data sits in the customer's own S3 bucket at roughly $0.003/GB effective with compression. (free trial)
Full review: #2 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit Coralogix →
3. Middleware
Flat per-GB observability with a 100 GB free tier · United States
Middleware is a young San Francisco vendor with a flat $0.30 per GB for metrics, logs and traces and a 100 GB free tier with unlimited users. Retention is 14 days on free and 30 on pay as you go. Its product catalogue and track record are far smaller than Datadog's.
Switch from Datadog if you want one flat per-GB rate and a free tier to test with real data.
Pricing: Free Forever covers 100 GB of data a month, 1k RUM sessions, 20k synthetic checks and 14-day retention, with unlimited users. Pay as you go is $0.30 per GB of metrics, logs and traces, with $1 per 1K RUM sessions, $1 per 5K synthetic checks and $10 per 1K browser test runs, and 30-day retention. Custom plans are quoted. (free plan)
Full review: #17 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit Middleware →
4. Grafana
Open source dashboards with a usage-billed cloud for metrics, logs and traces · United States
Grafana is open source under AGPL-3.0 and can be self-hosted with Loki, Mimir and Tempo, or bought as Grafana Cloud with a free tier and a $19 monthly Pro platform fee. Signals are priced separately, and you assemble more of the stack yourself than with Datadog's single agent.
Switch from Datadog if you want open source building blocks you can self-host or buy as a cloud service.
Pricing: Grafana Cloud has an always-free tier (for example 10k active metric series and 50 GB of logs a month, with 14-day retention). Pro has a $19 monthly platform fee, metrics from $6.50 per 1k series, and logs from $0.05 per GB processed, $0.40 per GB written and $0.10 per GB retained. Enterprise has a $25,000 a year minimum commit. (free plan)
Full review: #12 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit Grafana →
5. Honeycomb
Event-based observability with unlimited seats and querying · United States
Honeycomb prices by events, not hosts, and lists unlimited seats and queries on every plan. Pro starts at $150 a month for up to 750M events. It centers on tracing and debugging with OpenTelemetry data, so it is a narrower tool than Datadog and has no security or host-inventory modules.
Switch from Datadog if your main job is debugging distributed services and you want pricing by events.
Pricing: Free covers up to 20M events and 100M metric data points a month. Pro starts at $150 a month for up to 750M events, billed monthly or annually, and includes SSO, 100 triggers and 2 SLOs. Enterprise is quoted and starts with a base allowance of 10 billion events a year. All plans list unlimited seats, querying and scale. (free plan)
Full review: #15 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit Honeycomb →
6. Better Stack
Uptime, on-call and telemetry in one subscription · Czechia
Better Stack bundles uptime checks, on-call and status pages with logs, traces and error tracking, charged per responder licence from $29 a month on annual billing, with unlimited telemetry viewers. It lists importers for Datadog and Grafana dashboards. Free retention is only three days.
Switch from Datadog if you are a small team that wants monitoring, paging and logs from one vendor.
Pricing: Free for personal projects: 10 monitors and heartbeats, 1 status page, 100,000 exceptions and 3 GB of logs and traces a month. Paid responder licences are $29 per month on annual billing ($34 monthly), with unlimited team members for telemetry access at $0 per member. Slack-native incident management is $9 per responder, status pages and AI SRE are priced separately. (free plan)
Full review: #16 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit Better Stack →
7. New Relic
One platform billed by data ingest and by user type · United States
New Relic states it does not charge per host. It bills data ingest at $0.40 per GB beyond a free 100 GB, plus users: full platform seats from $10 for the first and $99 for each additional on Standard. Seats, not hosts, become the cost to watch.
Switch from Datadog if you want ingest-based pricing with a large free tier instead of host counts.
Pricing: Usage-based: the free tier has 100 GB of data ingest a month and one full platform user, then $0.40 per GB (Standard and Pro, original data ingest) or $0.60 per GB (Data Plus). Basic users are free, core users $49, full platform users from $10 for the first and $99 for each additional on Standard, and $349 on Pro with annual commitment ($418.80 monthly). (free plan)
Full review: #13 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit New Relic →
8. Dynatrace
Automatic dependency mapping and a unified data lakehouse · United States
Dynatrace draws down an annual commitment at rate-card prices, such as $58 a month per 8 GiB host for Full-Stack Monitoring. A single agent maps dependencies automatically. It is another full suite sold on a commitment, so it changes how you are billed more than whether you are billed.
Switch from Datadog if you want another full platform with automatic dependency mapping and accept a commitment.
Pricing: An annual platform commitment drawn down at published rate-card prices, such as $58/month per 8 GiB host for Full-Stack Monitoring, $29/month per host for Infrastructure Monitoring and $0.20 per GiB of logs ingested; the total resists forecasting before a trial with real traffic. (free trial)
Full review: #8 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit Dynatrace →
9. Elastic Observability
Log-first observability built on the ELK stack · Netherlands
Elastic Cloud Serverless bills observability per GB ingested, from as low as $0.07, and per GB retained each month, from as low as $0.017, with 50 GB of egress free. Elasticsearch search sits underneath. A self-managed route exists, but you then run clusters and upgrades yourself.
Switch from Datadog if you want search-based log analytics billed per GB ingested and retained.
Pricing: Elastic Cloud Serverless bills observability per GB ingested and per GB retained, at published rates; Elastic Cloud Hosted bills by provisioned resources, and self-managed paid subscriptions are licensed by node count and RAM. A fully self-managed deployment can also run on the free, open source core. (open source)
Full review: #9 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit Elastic Observability →
10. Sumo Logic
Log analytics and Cloud SIEM priced on consumption credits · United States
Sumo Logic centers on log analytics and security, sold as Essentials or Enterprise Suite and paid in credits across ingest tiers. It advertises unlimited users, and a Flex option bills search separately. Prices are not listed per unit. Its infrastructure monitoring is thinner than Datadog's.
Switch from Datadog if your priority is log analytics and security with unlimited users on a credit contract.
Pricing: Two published plans, Essentials and Enterprise Suite, paid in Sumo credits and quoted; Enterprise Suite adds Flex licensing with $0 ingest and search billed separately, and Cloud SIEM and Cloud SOAR on activation. Credits can be bought by card, up to $25,000, from a 30-day trial. (free trial)
Full review: #10 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit Sumo Logic →
11. LogicMonitor
Hybrid infrastructure monitoring with AIOps event intelligence · United States
LogicMonitor sells hybrid infrastructure monitoring in Hybrid Units: $16 for Essentials, $27 for Advanced and $53 for Signature with Edwin AI. Any plan has a 15-day free trial. It suits network and server estates more than application tracing and developer workflows.
Switch from Datadog if you monitor servers and network gear across a hybrid estate more than application code.
Pricing: Hybrid Units at starting monthly list prices of $16 (LM Essentials), $27 (LM Advanced) and $53 (LM Signature + Edwin AI) per unit; Edwin AI is an add-on on the lower packages. Any plan can be tried free for 15 days. (free trial)
Full review: #11 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit LogicMonitor →
12. Zabbix
Free infrastructure monitoring with zero feature gating · Latvia
Zabbix is free software under the AGPLv3 from version 7.0, with no host cap, and the vendor sells support subscriptions instead of licences. You host and tune it yourself, and it is not a managed SaaS with built-in tracing and session replay.
Switch from Datadog if you can run the monitoring server yourself and want no per-host licence fee.
Pricing: The software is entirely free and open source with no host cap. Paid support subscriptions are Silver $325/month and Gold from $825/month, billed annually, with Platinum, Enterprise and Global custom; Zabbix Cloud is priced by compute tier, sized by new values per second. (open source)
Full review: #6 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit Zabbix →
13. Checkmk
Auto-discovery infrastructure monitoring, 2,000+ checks · Germany
Checkmk has a free Community edition and sells self-hosted and SaaS editions priced by the number of services monitored, roughly 30 per host. It focuses on infrastructure and network checks. Application tracing and log search are lighter than in Datadog.
Switch from Datadog if you want infrastructure monitoring priced by services with a free open source edition.
Pricing: Community edition free for roughly 100 hosts; Pro from €190/month (about €1.90/host); Ultimate from €275/month (about €2.75/host); Cloud (SaaS) from €240/month (about €7.20/host), all published. (open source)
Full review: #4 of 18 in our ranking ·
Visit Checkmk →
