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Datadog vs GlitchTip

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Datadog and GlitchTip built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 25 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Datadog if…

Teams that need one vendor across infrastructure, logs, traces and replay, and can model a bill that has a separate meter for each.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose GlitchTip if…

Anyone who wants Sentry-shaped error tracking without Sentry's bill — the SDKs are compatible, so switching is a DSN change, and self-hosting is free and genuinely supported.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Datadog: Ingest and indexing are billed separately on the same logs, so $0.10 per GB is not the cost of keeping a log — the indexing charge above it is where the bill actually lands.
  • GlitchTip: It tracks errors and nothing else. No tracing, no replays, no uptime monitoring, so a team wanting one pane of glass will be assembling it from parts.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Datadog alternatives · GlitchTip alternatives

16 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Datadog documentationVisit GlitchTip documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionDatadogGlitchTip
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
Kind of free offerFree trialFree tier
Entry paid plan$15 per host per month for Infrastructure Pro, the entry paid product. Datadog prices per product rather than per plan, so this is one meter of many rather than a platform fee.$15/month for the 100,000 event plan; $50 for 500,000 and $250 for 3 million
Pricing modelPer product, not per plan: infrastructure per host, logs split between ingest per GB and indexing per million events, with retention chosen per index and priced accordingly. There is no single Datadog price — this profile follows Log Management, which is the meter comparable to the per-GB platforms in this category.Flat monthly tiers bought by event ceiling, with a free self-hosted build as the alternative to the hosted plans.
Infrastructure
Regions
Nine sites: US1, US3, US5, EU1 (Germany), US1-FED, US2-FED, AP1 (Japan), AP2 (Australia) and UK1; each site is a separate instance chosen at signup.
Two fully separate hosted instances: US (DigitalOcean NYC1, New York, app.glitchtip.com) and EU (DigitalOcean FRA1, Frankfurt, eu.glitchtip.com); no replication between them.
Observability
Events included
None included. Log indexing is $1.70 per million events per month at 15-day retention, and Flex Storage is $0.05 per million events stored — ingest and indexing are separate charges on the same logs.
100,000 events a month on the cheapest paid plan; 1,000 on the free hosted plan. One meter, not several — GlitchTip counts events and nothing else.
Retention windowChosen per index and priced with it: 3, 7, 15 or 30 days, or greater than 30 by arrangement. The $1.70 per million rate is the 15-day tier. Infrastructure metrics retain 1 day on the free plan.90 days by default when self-hosted, set by GLITCHTIP_RETENTION_DAYS and configurable per data type — events, transactions, logs, uptime checks and files all inherit it, releases keep 365 days. Events move from Postgres to cold storage after 30 days but stay queryable. GlitchTip publishes no retention figure for its hosted plans.
Self-hostable
Limited — BYOC Logs runs the log engine in your own environment; Datadog hosts the UI, pipeline config and query routing.
Supported
Compliance
SOC 2
SOC 2 Type 2 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
No SOC 2 report claimed; the hosted architecture is described as adhering to principles found in HIPAA, SOC II and ISO 27001 frameworks.
ISO 27001
ISO/IEC 27001 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications, with the certificate a featured downloadable document.
No certification claimed; the hosted architecture is described as adhering to principles found in the ISO 27001 framework.
HIPAA
HIPAA listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
BAA available on the Large plan ($250/month) for the US instance only; the EU instance is not covered.
GDPR / data residencyGDPR listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications; a Data Processing Addendum is available under Legal documents.Fully independent EU instance in Frankfurt keeps events, accounts and email inside the EU; a DPA with EU SCCs and the UK addendum is published.
PCI DSS
PCI DSS listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
Not certified itself; billing is handled by Stripe (PCI-DSS Service Provider Level 1), which never receives event data.
Encryption at restStored data is protected by encryption, access controls and authentication; integration credentials are encrypted at rest and in transit.DigitalOcean Volumes Block Storage encryption at rest; TLS 1.2+ in transit.
Role-based access controlDefault Admin, Standard and Read-Only roles, plus support for custom roles.Organization members hold one of four roles (member, admin, manager, owner) set via the members API, plus optional per-team roles. Linked as "API Documentation" from glitchtip.com/documentation.
Private networking / VPC
AWS PrivateLink supported for Agent and log traffic on supported Datadog sites.
Hosted database cluster sits in a private VPC unreachable from the public internet; no customer-facing private connectivity is described.
Dedicated infrastructureBYOC Log Management runs a petabyte-scale log engine in your own infrastructure while the Datadog platform is used for querying, analytics and investigations. Scope: log management deployed into your own cloud environment; other Datadog products are not covered by BYOC.All hosted plans run on the same security-controlled infrastructure; the difference between Free, Small, Medium and Large is contractual.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

Kind of free offer

Datadog
Free trial
GlitchTip
Free tier
Sources (2) →

Entry paid plan

Datadog
$15 per host per month for Infrastructure Pro, the entry paid product. Datadog prices per product rather than per plan, so this is one meter of many rather than a platform fee.
GlitchTip
$15/month for the 100,000 event plan; $50 for 500,000 and $250 for 3 million
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Datadog ↗

    “Pro Starting At $ 15 Per host, per month* Centralize your monitoring of systems, services, and serverless functions 1,000+ integrations”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing — GlitchTip ↗

    “Up to 100k events/mo [...] $15 / month [...] Up to 500k events/mo [...] $50 / month [...] Up to 3 million events/mo [...] $250 / month”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Pricing model

Datadog
Per product, not per plan: infrastructure per host, logs split between ingest per GB and indexing per million events, with retention chosen per index and priced accordingly. There is no single Datadog price — this profile follows Log Management, which is the meter comparable to the per-GB platforms in this category.
GlitchTip
Flat monthly tiers bought by event ceiling, with a free self-hosted build as the alternative to the hosted plans.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Datadog ↗

    “Flex Ingest Starting At $ 0.10 Per ingested or scanned GB [...] Standard Indexing [...] $ 1.70 Per million log events, per month [...] Pro Starting At $ 15 Per host, per month”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • GlitchTip Pricing ↗

    “Self-hosted version Run on your own server Free for personal projects [...] up to 100k events/mo [...] support access $15 / month [...] up to 500k events/mo [...] up to 3 million events/mo”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

Regions

Datadog

Nine sites: US1, US3, US5, EU1 (Germany), US1-FED, US2-FED, AP1 (Japan), AP2 (Australia) and UK1; each site is a separate instance chosen at signup.

GlitchTip

Two fully separate hosted instances: US (DigitalOcean NYC1, New York, app.glitchtip.com) and EU (DigitalOcean FRA1, Frankfurt, eu.glitchtip.com); no replication between them.

Sources (2) →

Events included

Datadog

None included. Log indexing is $1.70 per million events per month at 15-day retention, and Flex Storage is $0.05 per million events stored — ingest and indexing are separate charges on the same logs.

GlitchTip

100,000 events a month on the cheapest paid plan; 1,000 on the free hosted plan. One meter, not several — GlitchTip counts events and nothing else.

Sources (2) →

Retention window

Datadog
Chosen per index and priced with it: 3, 7, 15 or 30 days, or greater than 30 by arrangement. The $1.70 per million rate is the 15-day tier. Infrastructure metrics retain 1 day on the free plan.
GlitchTip
90 days by default when self-hosted, set by GLITCHTIP_RETENTION_DAYS and configurable per data type — events, transactions, logs, uptime checks and files all inherit it, releases keep 365 days. Events move from Postgres to cold storage after 30 days but stay queryable. GlitchTip publishes no retention figure for its hosted plans.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Datadog ↗

    “3-day retention 7-day retention 15-day retention 30-day retention Greater than 30 days $ 1.70 Per million log events, per month* [...] 1-day metric retention”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Installation — GlitchTip documentation ↗

    “Data Retention [...] GlitchTip automatically cleans up old data based on configurable retention periods. [...] GLITCHTIP_RETENTION_DAYS 90 Master default for all retention periods [...] GLITCHTIP_EVENT_HOT_DAYS 30 Days to keep events in PostgreSQL before archival [...] GLITCHTIP_RELEASE_RETENTION_DAYS 365 Release retention”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official docs · Report a correction

Self-hostable

Datadog
Limited — BYOC Logs runs the log engine in your own environment; Datadog hosts the UI, pipeline config and query routing.
GlitchTip
Supported
Sources (2) →
  • BYOC Logs Architecture — Datadog Docs ↗

    “The BYOC Logs engine runs in your environment. [...] The Observability Pipelines Worker and the BYOC Logs engine process log data in your environment. Datadog hosts the pipeline configuration UI and Log Explorer, and routes queries to the engine. [...] No log data leaves your environment during ingestion.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Pricing — GlitchTip ↗

    “Self-hosted version [...] Free [...] Up to 1,000 events/mo”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

SOC 2

Datadog
SOC 2 Type 2 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
GlitchTip
No SOC 2 report claimed; the hosted architecture is described as adhering to principles found in HIPAA, SOC II and ISO 27001 frameworks.
Sources (2) →

ISO 27001

Datadog
ISO/IEC 27001 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications, with the certificate a featured downloadable document.
GlitchTip
No certification claimed; the hosted architecture is described as adhering to principles found in the ISO 27001 framework.
Sources (2) →

HIPAA

Datadog
HIPAA listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
GlitchTip
BAA available on the Large plan ($250/month) for the US instance only; the EU instance is not covered.
Sources (2) →

GDPR / data residency

Datadog
GDPR listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications; a Data Processing Addendum is available under Legal documents.
GlitchTip
Fully independent EU instance in Frankfurt keeps events, accounts and email inside the EU; a DPA with EU SCCs and the UK addendum is published.
Sources (2) →

PCI DSS

Datadog
PCI DSS listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
GlitchTip
Not certified itself; billing is handled by Stripe (PCI-DSS Service Provider Level 1), which never receives event data.
Sources (2) →

Encryption at rest

Datadog
Stored data is protected by encryption, access controls and authentication; integration credentials are encrypted at rest and in transit.
GlitchTip
DigitalOcean Volumes Block Storage encryption at rest; TLS 1.2+ in transit.
Sources (2) →

Role-based access control

Datadog
Default Admin, Standard and Read-Only roles, plus support for custom roles.
GlitchTip
Organization members hold one of four roles (member, admin, manager, owner) set via the members API, plus optional per-team roles. Linked as "API Documentation" from glitchtip.com/documentation.
Sources (2) →
  • Datadog Security ↗

    “Datadog includes default roles, including Admin, Standard, and Read-Only, and supports custom roles for more granular access management.”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official site · Report a correction

  • GlitchTip API (OpenAPI schema) ↗

    “"description": "Update member role within organization" [...] "orgRole": {"enum": ["member", "admin", "manager", "owner"], "title": "Orgrole", "type": "string"}”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

Private networking / VPC

Datadog
AWS PrivateLink supported for Agent and log traffic on supported Datadog sites.
GlitchTip
Hosted database cluster sits in a private VPC unreachable from the public internet; no customer-facing private connectivity is described.
Sources (2) →

Dedicated infrastructure

Datadog
BYOC Log Management runs a petabyte-scale log engine in your own infrastructure while the Datadog platform is used for querying, analytics and investigations. Scope: log management deployed into your own cloud environment; other Datadog products are not covered by BYOC.
GlitchTip
All hosted plans run on the same security-controlled infrastructure; the difference between Free, Small, Medium and Large is contractual.
Sources (2) →
  • Bring Your Own Cloud Log Management | Datadog ↗

    “Datadog Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) Log Management lets you keep your logs in your own environment while using the Datadog platform for querying, analytics, and investigations. [...] it runs a high-performance, petabyte-scale log engine in your infrastructure, giving you full control over costs, scale, and compliance.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

  • HIPAA Compliance | GlitchTip ↗

    “All hosted plans run on the same security-controlled infrastructure: encryption at rest, TLS in transit, private VPC, and 90-day data retention. The difference is contractual”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

What the free plan includesGlitchTip: 1,000 events a month, described by GlitchTip as free forever.
When the free offer endsGlitchTip: Never — free forever, up to 1,000 events a month.
Session replayDatadog: Supported — Billed separately from RUM, from $2.50 per 1,000 sessions; replays kept 30 days.
Ingest price per GBDatadog: $0.10 per ingested or scanned GB per month for Log Management, billed annually — the same rate on demand. Indexing those logs is charged separately.
Query priceDatadog: $0.05 per GB scanned for Archive Search on an annual commitment ($0.07 per GB scanned on-demand); log Rehydration costs $0.10 per compressed GB scanned.
Audit logsDatadog: Datadog Audit Trail helps customers monitor user and system activity within their organization, including who performed an action, what action was taken, and relevant context about the activity.
Support on entry paid planGlitchTip: Support access on Small ($15/month), the entry paid plan; priority email and live chat from Medium; development support and prioritization on Large.
Customer-managed keysDatadog: Log Archives to Amazon S3 can be forced to use a customer-managed key (CMK) from AWS KMS; you supply the CMK ARN and key policy. Scope: archive objects in your own S3 bucket; the other dropdown options are SSE-S3 and the bucket default.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Datadog or GlitchTip?

Datadog: $15 per host per month for Infrastructure Pro, the entry paid product. Datadog prices per product rather than per plan, so this is one meter of many rather than a platform fee.

GlitchTip: $15/month for the 100,000 event plan; $50 for 500,000 and $250 for 3 million

Should I choose Datadog or GlitchTip?

Pick Datadog if Teams that need one vendor across infrastructure, logs, traces and replay, and can model a bill that has a separate meter for each.

Pick GlitchTip if Anyone who wants Sentry-shaped error tracking without Sentry's bill — the SDKs are compatible, so switching is a DSN change, and self-hosting is free and genuinely supported.

Provider pages

DatadogObservability suite priced per product — this profile follows Log Management, the closest analogue to the per-GB platforms it competes with.GlitchTipOpen-source error tracking compatible with Sentry SDKs, offered as a hosted plan priced per event or run yourself for free.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.