Datadog vs Grafana Cloud
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Datadog and Grafana Cloud built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
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 Grafana Cloud if…
Metrics-heavy monitoring where 13 months of retention matters — that window is an order of magnitude beyond what the error trackers and most telemetry platforms keep.
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.
- Grafana Cloud: Logs and traces get 30 days rather than 13 months, so the headline retention figure does not describe most of what you send it.
Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Datadog alternatives · Grafana Cloud alternatives
18 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Datadog 0
Grafana Cloud 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Datadog | Grafana Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Kind of free offer | Free trial | Free 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. | $19/month platform fee for Pro, which includes 10,000 active series before usage billing starts. |
| Pricing model | 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. | A $19 platform fee plus metered usage, with volume discounts applied automatically rather than negotiated. The enterprise tier starts at a $25,000 annual spend commitment. |
| 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. | 28 region/provider combinations across AWS, GCP and Azure, from US East and EU Germany to UK, India, Singapore, Japan, Brazil and Australia; a stack cannot change region after creation. |
| 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. | Free plan, per month: 10k active metrics series; 50 GB each of logs, traces and profiles; 50k frontend-observability sessions; 500 k6 virtual user hours; 100k API test executions. Grafana meters series, GB, sessions and host hours; no event-count meter is published. |
| Retention window | 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. | 13 months for metrics and 30 days for logs, traces, profiles and k6 tests on Pro. The free tier is 14 days for everything. |
| Session replay | Supported — Billed separately from RUM, from $2.50 per 1,000 sessions; replays kept 30 days. | Limited — Public preview add-on to Frontend Observability, disabled by default and enabled per stack on request. |
| Self-hostable | Limited — BYOC Logs runs the log engine in your own environment; Datadog hosts the UI, pipeline config and query routing. | Supported |
| Ingest price per GB | $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. | From $0.050 per GB processed, falling to $0.046 above 10,000 GB and $0.044 above 25,000 with automatic volume discounts. |
| Compliance | ||
| SOC 2 | SOC 2 Type 2 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications. | SOC 2 report listed in the Grafana Labs Trust Center, available on request. |
| ISO 27001 | ISO/IEC 27001 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications, with the certificate a featured downloadable document. | ISO/IEC 27001 certificate and Statement of Applicability listed in the Trust Center. |
| GDPR / data residency | GDPR listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications; a Data Processing Addendum is available under Legal documents. | GDPR, EU-US DPF and UK/Swiss extensions listed in the Trust Center with a DPA; residency comes from choosing one of the published regions at stack creation. |
| PCI DSS | PCI DSS listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications. | PCI DSS v4.0.1 listed among Trust Center compliance documents. |
| Encryption at rest | Stored data is protected by encryption, access controls and authentication; integration credentials are encrypted at rest and in transit. | AES-256 for storage and HTTPS/TLS in transit; Grafana Cloud manages the keys with industry-standard key management systems. |
| Customer-managed keys | 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. | Keys are managed by Grafana Cloud with industry-standard key management systems. — Read from the Grafana Assistant security page, which describes how Grafana Cloud stores customer data. |
| Role-based access control | Default Admin, Standard and Read-Only roles, plus support for custom roles. | Grafana Cloud administrative controls and role-based access control (RBAC). |
| Private networking / VPC | AWS PrivateLink supported for Agent and log traffic on supported Datadog sites. | AWS PrivateLink, Azure Private Link and GCP Private Service Connect are documented connectivity options for Grafana Cloud. |
| Dedicated infrastructure | 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. | Bring Your Own Cloud deploys the managed stack into a dedicated cloud account in your AWS or GCP (Azure case-by-case) rather than a Grafana Labs-owned account. |
Where they differ.
Kind of free offer
- Datadog
- Free trial
- Grafana Cloud
- Free tier
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Datadog ↗
“Free Starting At $ 0 Core collection and visualization features 1-day metric retention Up to 5 hosts Start Free Trial”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Pricing — Grafana Cloud ↗
“Limited to 50 GB ingested per month 14 day retention Community support”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
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.
- Grafana Cloud
- $19/month platform fee for Pro, which includes 10,000 active series before usage billing starts.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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 — Grafana Cloud ↗
“Pro Self-serve From $19 / month + usage with volume discounts [...] Platform fee of $19 per month includes: 10k active series per month then pay as you go 13 months retention”
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.
- Grafana Cloud
- A $19 platform fee plus metered usage, with volume discounts applied automatically rather than negotiated. The enterprise tier starts at a $25,000 annual spend commitment.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Pricing — Grafana Cloud ↗
“From $19 / month + usage with volume discounts [...] Automatic volume discounts [...] Enterprise Full service Starts at $25,000 / year spend commit”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
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.
28 region/provider combinations across AWS, GCP and Azure, from US East and EU Germany to UK, India, Singapore, Japan, Brazil and Australia; a stack cannot change region after creation.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Getting Started with Datadog Sites ↗
“US1 https://app.datadoghq.com datadoghq.com US US3 https://us3.datadoghq.com us3.datadoghq.com US US5 https://us5.datadoghq.com us5.datadoghq.com US EU1 https://app.datadoghq.eu datadoghq.eu EU (Germany)”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Grafana Cloud availability by region | Grafana Cloud documentation ↗
“The availability of Grafana Cloud services varies depending on your geographical location. [...] Grafana does not support changing the Grafana Cloud region of an existing stack.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
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.
- Grafana Cloud
- Free plan, per month: 10k active metrics series; 50 GB each of logs, traces and profiles; 50k frontend-observability sessions; 500 k6 virtual user hours; 100k API test executions. Grafana meters series, GB, sessions and host hours; no event-count meter is published.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Datadog ↗
“Standard Indexing 15-day retention [...] $ 1.70 Per million log events, per month* [...] Flex Storage Starting At $ 0.05 Per million events stored, per month*”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Pricing | Grafana Labs ↗
“Limited to 10k active series per month [...] Limited to 50 GB ingested per month [...] Limited to 50k sessions per month”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Retention window
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.
13 months for metrics and 30 days for logs, traces, profiles and k6 tests on Pro. The free tier is 14 days for everything.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Pricing — Grafana Cloud ↗
“13 months retention for metrics; 30 days retention for logs, traces, profiles, & k6 performance tests [...] Limited to 50 GB ingested per month 14 day retention”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
Session replay
- Datadog
- Supported — Billed separately from RUM, from $2.50 per 1,000 sessions; replays kept 30 days.
- Grafana Cloud
- Limited — Public preview add-on to Frontend Observability, disabled by default and enabled per stack on request.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Datadog ↗
“Session Replay Starting At $ 2.50 Per 1,000 sessions, per month* [...] Replay sessions are billed separately at $ 2.50 per 1,000 sessions.”
Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Session Replay | Grafana Cloud documentation ↗
“Grafana Labs offers limited support, and breaking changes might occur prior to the feature being made generally available. [...] Session Replay is disabled by default and must be enabled per Grafana Cloud stack. [...] Session Replay is an add-on feature for Grafana Cloud Frontend Observability”
Read 2026-09-13 · 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.
- Grafana Cloud
- Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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 — Grafana Cloud ↗
“minimum commit of $25,000 per year. Cloud or self-host”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
Ingest price per GB
- Datadog
- $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.
- Grafana Cloud
- From $0.050 per GB processed, falling to $0.046 above 10,000 GB and $0.044 above 25,000 with automatic volume discounts.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing — Datadog ↗
“Flex Ingest Starting At $ 0.10 Per ingested or scanned GB, per month* [...] *Per GB of uncompressed data ingested for processing, or compressed data scanned for rehydrating. **Billed annually or $ 0.10 on-demand”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Pricing — Grafana Cloud ↗
“Pro Self-serve Starts at $0.050/GB Process Rate / GB GB $0.050 1 - 10,000 $0.046 10,001 - 25,000 $0.044 25,001+ Automatic volume discounts”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
SOC 2
- Datadog
- SOC 2 Type 2 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
- Grafana Cloud
- SOC 2 report listed in the Grafana Labs Trust Center, available on request.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Datadog Trust Center ↗
“PCI DSS TISAX VPAT EU AI Act IRAP SOC 2 Type 2”
Read 2026-09-14 · official site · Report a correction
- Trust Center ↗
“Compliance SOC 2 ISO/IEC 27001 ISO/IEC 27001 SoA ISO 22301 PCI DSS v4.0.1 GDPR”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
ISO 27001
- Datadog
- ISO/IEC 27001 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications, with the certificate a featured downloadable document.
- Grafana Cloud
- ISO/IEC 27001 certificate and Statement of Applicability listed in the Trust Center.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Datadog Trust Center ↗
“Compliance [...] ISO/IEC 27001 [...] Featured Documents COMPLIANCE ISO/IEC 27001”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
- Trust Center ↗
“Compliance SOC 2 ISO/IEC 27001 ISO/IEC 27001 SoA ISO 22301 PCI DSS v4.0.1 GDPR”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
GDPR / data residency
- Datadog
- GDPR listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications; a Data Processing Addendum is available under Legal documents.
- Grafana Cloud
- GDPR, EU-US DPF and UK/Swiss extensions listed in the Trust Center with a DPA; residency comes from choosing one of the published regions at stack creation.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Datadog Trust Center ↗
“Compliance [...] GDPR [...] Legal Subprocessors Cyber Insurance Data Processing Addendum”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
- Trust Center ↗
“GDPR Microsoft SSPA EU-US DPF UK Extension to EU-US DPF Swiss-US DPF”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
PCI DSS
- Datadog
- PCI DSS listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
- Grafana Cloud
- PCI DSS v4.0.1 listed among Trust Center compliance documents.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Datadog Trust Center ↗
“ISO/IEC 27701 ISO/IEC 42001:2023 PCI DSS TISAX VPAT EU AI Act IRAP SOC 2 Type 2”
Read 2026-09-14 · official site · Report a correction
- Trust Center ↗
“Compliance SOC 2 ISO/IEC 27001 ISO/IEC 27001 SoA ISO 22301 PCI DSS v4.0.1 GDPR”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
Encryption at rest
- Datadog
- Stored data is protected by encryption, access controls and authentication; integration credentials are encrypted at rest and in transit.
- Grafana Cloud
- AES-256 for storage and HTTPS/TLS in transit; Grafana Cloud manages the keys with industry-standard key management systems.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Reducing Data Related Risks ↗
“Data stored by Datadog is protected by encryption, access controls, and authentication.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Your data and security | Grafana Cloud documentation ↗
“Grafana Cloud encrypts your data at rest and in transit. It uses strong encryption standards (AES-256 for storage, HTTPS/TLS for network traffic) and manages keys with industry-standard key management systems.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Customer-managed keys
- Datadog
- 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.
- Grafana Cloud
- Keys are managed by Grafana Cloud with industry-standard key management systems. — Read from the Grafana Assistant security page, which describes how Grafana Cloud stores customer data.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Log Archives — Datadog Docs ↗
“This option ensures that all archives objects are uploaded using a customer-managed key (CMK) from [...] Ensure that you have completed the following steps to create a valid CMK and CMK policy. Then, provide the CMK ARN to successfully configure this encryption type.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Your data and security | Grafana Cloud documentation ↗
“It uses strong encryption standards (AES-256 for storage, HTTPS/TLS for network traffic) and manages keys with industry-standard key management systems.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Role-based access control
- Datadog
- Default Admin, Standard and Read-Only roles, plus support for custom roles.
- Grafana Cloud
- Grafana Cloud administrative controls and role-based access control (RBAC).
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Trust Center ↗
“Customers can manage access using Grafana Cloud administrative controls and role-based access control (RBAC).”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
Private networking / VPC
- Datadog
- AWS PrivateLink supported for Agent and log traffic on supported Datadog sites.
- Grafana Cloud
- AWS PrivateLink, Azure Private Link and GCP Private Service Connect are documented connectivity options for Grafana Cloud.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Connect to Datadog over AWS PrivateLink ↗
“This guide walks you through configuring AWS PrivateLink for use with Datadog.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Security and account management | Grafana Cloud documentation ↗
“AWS PrivateLink Configure AWS PrivateLink Azure Private Link Configure Azure Private Link GCP Private Service Connect Configure GCP Private Service Connect”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
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.
- Grafana Cloud
- Bring Your Own Cloud deploys the managed stack into a dedicated cloud account in your AWS or GCP (Azure case-by-case) rather than a Grafana Labs-owned account.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- 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
- Grafana BYOC | Fully managed observability in your AWS or GCP | Grafana Labs ↗
“Access Grafana Labs’ complete observability platform in your AWS or GCP account (Azure available case-by-case). [...] A dedicated cloud account (AWS, GCP, or Azure case-by-case)”
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.
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.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: Datadog or Grafana Cloud?
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.
Grafana Cloud: $19/month platform fee for Pro, which includes 10,000 active series before usage billing starts.
Should I choose Datadog or Grafana Cloud?
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 Grafana Cloud if Metrics-heavy monitoring where 13 months of retention matters — that window is an order of magnitude beyond what the error trackers and most telemetry platforms keep.
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