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Datadog vs SigNoz

SEPT 2026 audit

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

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 23 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 SigNoz if…

Teams that want per-GB billing without per-host or per-seat charges, and the option to run the same product themselves rather than being locked to the cloud version.

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.
  • SigNoz: $0.30 per GB is six times OpenObserve's rate, so a high-volume log pipeline pays a large premium for the packaging.

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

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

Visit Datadog documentationVisit SigNoz 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.

CriterionDatadogSigNoz
Pricing
Free tier
Yes
No
Kind of free offerFree trialFree trial
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.$49/month for Teams, and the $49 is usage credit rather than a fee on top — SigNoz bills against it before charging more.
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.Per GB ingested, with no per-user, per-host or custom-metric pricing — SigNoz states all three exclusions explicitly. Retention is a per-signal choice that changes the rate.
Infrastructure
RegionsNine 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.US, EU and India data centres for SigNoz Cloud; Enterprise Cloud lets you pick the region.
Observability
Events includedNone 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.No events meter: SigNoz Cloud bills traces and logs per GB and metrics per million samples. The $49/month Teams minimum includes $49 of usage — e.g. 163 GB of logs or traces, or 490 mn metric samples.
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.
15 days by default for logs and traces, selectable up to 30, 90, 180 days or 1 year at higher rates.
Session replay
Supported — Billed separately from RUM, from $2.50 per 1,000 sessions; replays kept 30 days.
Not supported — SigNoz's own table of capabilities it does not offer today marks Session Replays No for SigNoz Cloud.
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.
$0.30 per GB ingested for logs, and the same for traces. Retention is chosen per signal and priced with it.
Query price$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.No charge for querying on SigNoz Cloud: query compute is included in the $0.30/GB ingestion price, with no dashboard or API charges.
Compliance
SOC 2SOC 2 Type 2 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.SOC 2 Type 2 compliant on SigNoz Cloud.
HIPAAHIPAA listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.HIPAA compliant, with a BAA available as an add-on for eligible SigNoz Cloud contracts.
GDPR / data residencyGDPR listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications; a Data Processing Addendum is available under Legal documents.Data residency via US, EU and India regions so data need not leave its region; Enterprise Cloud selects the region.
Encryption at restStored data is protected by encryption, access controls and authentication; integration credentials are encrypted at rest and in transit.Encrypted at rest and in transit on the Enterprise offering.
Role-based access controlDefault Admin, Standard and Read-Only roles, plus support for custom roles.Role-based access control included; fine-grained RBAC is listed as beta on the pricing comparison.
Private networking / VPC
AWS PrivateLink supported for Agent and log traffic on supported Datadog sites.
BYOC / Enterprise Self-Hosted runs the SigNoz stack inside your own AWS/GCP/Azure account, so your data never leaves your VPC. From the deployment-options section: Enterprise Self-Hosted / BYOC, alongside a fully managed Enterprise 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.
Enterprise offers SigNoz Cloud: Dedicated, Enterprise Self-Hosted, and a bring-your-own-cloud option run by SigNoz in your account.

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.

Free tier

Datadog
Yes
SigNoz
No
Sources (2) →
  • 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 — SigNoz ↗

    “Teams For fast-scaling teams that need observability to scale with them. starts from $199 $49 /month [...] After the included $49 of usage [...] Most teams start with Teams Cloud free trial”

    Read 2026-09-07 · 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.
SigNoz
$49/month for Teams, and the $49 is usage credit rather than a fee on top — SigNoz bills against it before charging more.
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 — SigNoz ↗

    “Teams For fast-scaling teams that need observability to scale with them. starts from $199 $49 /month [...] After the included $49 of usage”

    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.
SigNoz
Per GB ingested, with no per-user, per-host or custom-metric pricing — SigNoz states all three exclusions explicitly. Retention is a per-signal choice that changes the rate.
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

  • Pricing — SigNoz ↗

    “Simple Usage-based Predictable Observability Costs No user-based pricing No host-based pricing No special pricing for custom metrics”

    Read 2026-09-06 · 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.
SigNoz
US, EU and India data centres for SigNoz Cloud; Enterprise Cloud lets you pick the region.
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.
SigNoz
No events meter: SigNoz Cloud bills traces and logs per GB and metrics per million samples. The $49/month Teams minimum includes $49 of usage — e.g. 163 GB of logs or traces, or 490 mn metric samples.
Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • SigNoz | Pricing ↗

    “After the included $49 of usage, SigNoz Cloud bills: Traces $0.30 /GB Logs $0.30 /GB Metrics $0.10 /mn samples [...] $49 of usage (for example, 163 GB of logs or traces, or 490 mn metric samples)”

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

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.

SigNoz

15 days by default for logs and traces, selectable up to 30, 90, 180 days or 1 year at higher rates.

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

  • Pricing — SigNoz ↗

    “Logs $ 0.3 /GB ingested 15 days retention 15 days retention 30 days retention 90 days retention 180 days retention 1 year 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.
SigNoz
Not supported — SigNoz's own table of capabilities it does not offer today marks Session Replays No for SigNoz Cloud.
Sources (2) →

Self-hostable

Datadog
Limited — BYOC Logs runs the log engine in your own environment; Datadog hosts the UI, pipeline config and query routing.
SigNoz
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 — SigNoz ↗

    “SigNoz Cloud: BYOC, managed by SigNoz in your cloud account Self-Hosted SigNoz: enterprise support. Your team operates infrastructure, storage, scaling, upgrades, and backups.”

    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.
SigNoz
$0.30 per GB ingested for logs, and the same for traces. Retention is chosen per signal and priced with it.
Sources (2) →
  • 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 — SigNoz ↗

    “Logs $ 0.3 /GB ingested 15 days retention [...] Traces $ 0.3 /GB ingested 15 days retention”

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

Query price

Datadog
$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.
SigNoz
No charge for querying on SigNoz Cloud: query compute is included in the $0.30/GB ingestion price, with no dashboard or API charges.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing | Datadog (Archive Search) ↗

    “Starting At $ 0.05 Per GB scanned [...] Billed annually at $ 0.05 per GB of committed scan capacity or monthly at $ 0.07 per GB scanned on-demand [...] Datadog charges $ 0.10 per compressed GB of log data that is scanned.”

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

  • ClickStack/HyperDX Alternative | SigNoz ↗

    “Compute / Query Cost No charge for querying. Included in per-GB price [...] SigNoz Cloud eliminates query costs, dashboard fees, and API charges. Pay only for data volume ingested.”

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

SOC 2

Datadog
SOC 2 Type 2 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
SigNoz
SOC 2 Type 2 compliant on SigNoz Cloud.
Sources (2) →

HIPAA

Datadog
HIPAA listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
SigNoz
HIPAA compliant, with a BAA available as an add-on for eligible SigNoz Cloud contracts.
Sources (2) →

GDPR / data residency

Datadog
GDPR listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications; a Data Processing Addendum is available under Legal documents.
SigNoz
Data residency via US, EU and India regions so data need not leave its region; Enterprise Cloud selects the region.
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.
SigNoz
Encrypted at rest and in transit on the Enterprise offering.
Sources (2) →

Role-based access control

Datadog
Default Admin, Standard and Read-Only roles, plus support for custom roles.
SigNoz
Role-based access control included; fine-grained RBAC is listed as beta on the pricing comparison.
Sources (2) →

Private networking / VPC

Datadog
AWS PrivateLink supported for Agent and log traffic on supported Datadog sites.
SigNoz
BYOC / Enterprise Self-Hosted runs the SigNoz stack inside your own AWS/GCP/Azure account, so your data never leaves your VPC. From the deployment-options section: Enterprise Self-Hosted / BYOC, alongside a fully managed Enterprise Cloud.
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.
SigNoz
Enterprise offers SigNoz Cloud: Dedicated, Enterprise Self-Hosted, and a bring-your-own-cloud option run by SigNoz in your account.
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

  • SigNoz | Pricing ↗

    “Choose between the following offerings SigNoz Cloud: Dedicated”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · 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.

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.SigNoz: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about SigNoz.
Support on entry paid planSigNoz: In-product chat, email and Slack on the usage-based cloud plan. Enterprise, from $4,000/month, adds data residency and compliance.
ISO 27001Datadog: ISO/IEC 27001 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications, with the certificate a featured downloadable document.
PCI DSSDatadog: PCI DSS listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
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 SigNoz?

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.

SigNoz: $49/month for Teams, and the $49 is usage credit rather than a fee on top — SigNoz bills against it before charging more.

Free tier: Datadog or SigNoz?

Datadog: Yes

SigNoz: No

Should I choose Datadog or SigNoz?

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 SigNoz if Teams that want per-GB billing without per-host or per-seat charges, and the option to run the same product themselves rather than being locked to the cloud version.

Provider pages

DatadogObservability suite priced per product — this profile follows Log Management, the closest analogue to the per-GB platforms it competes with.SigNozOpen-source observability for logs, metrics and traces, billed per GB ingested with retention chosen per signal.

Related comparisons

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.