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Elastic Cloud vs Datadog

SEPT 2026 audit

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

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 27 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Elastic Cloud if…

Teams that need full-text search and observability on the same underlying engine, or that want the option to self-host later — Elastic's dual identity as a search platform and an observability platform is the actual differentiator against single-purpose competitors.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

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

Consider something else if…

  • Elastic Cloud: The need is narrowly error tracking or APM — a purpose-built tool is usually simpler to operate than standing up an Elasticsearch cluster for one workload, and Elastic Cloud's per-resource pricing doesn't publish a flat entry price the way single-purpose competitors do.
  • 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.

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

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

Visit Elastic Cloud documentationVisit Datadog 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.

CriterionElastic CloudDatadog
Pricing
Free tier
No — The only free offer here is a trial; no ongoing free tier is listed beside the Hosted and Serverless plans.
Yes
Kind of free offerFree trial — The only free offer here is a trial; no ongoing free tier is listed beside the Hosted and Serverless plans.Free trial
Entry paid planElastic Cloud Hosted Standard, cheapest of four subscription tiers: as low as $99 per month for a production config of 120 GB storage across 2 zones. Gold $114, Platinum $131, Enterprise $184 per month on the same config basis. Serverless is metered, no plan fee.$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.
Pricing modelThree deployment options priced differently: Hosted is resource-based, Serverless is usage-based — both pay-as-you-go monthly or prepaid — and Self-managed is licensed by node count and RAM.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.
Infrastructure
Regions
Hosted: 60 regions across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud (also Alibaba Cloud and FedRAMP). Serverless: generally available on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.
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.
Observability
Retention windowNo fixed window on Serverless: retention is priced per GB retained per month, as low as $0.017 (Logs Essentials) or $0.019 (Complete), and $0.005 for metrics.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.
Self-hostable
Supported
Limited — BYOC Logs runs the log engine in your own environment; Datadog hosts the UI, pipeline config and query routing.
Ingest price per GBAs low as $0.07 per GB ingested (logs, traces, RUM) on Serverless Observability Logs Essentials; as low as $0.09 on Observability Complete, with metrics at $0.023.$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 priceNo separate query meter on Serverless Observability: billing is ingest plus retention only, with egress 50 GB free then $0.05 per GB.$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.
Compliance
SOC 2SOC 2 Type 2 audit by Coalfire covers Elasticsearch Service and support subscriptions; report available on request via the Trust Center.SOC 2 Type 2 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
ISO 27001Information Security Program certified on ISO 27001, including ISO 27017 and ISO 27018.ISO/IEC 27001 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications, with the certificate a featured downloadable document.
HIPAAHIPAA business associate agreements available on all Elastic Cloud subscription tiers on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.HIPAA listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
GDPR / data residencyOperates in compliance with GDPR principles; customers can request a Data Processing Addendum through a support case.GDPR listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications; a Data Processing Addendum is available under Legal documents.
PCI DSSPCI DSS listed among the certifications in the Elastic Trust Center, alongside SOC 2, ISO 27001 and FedRAMP.PCI DSS listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
Encryption at restCluster data is encrypted at rest by default; TLS between Elasticsearch nodes and from the internet.Stored data is protected by encryption, access controls and authentication; integration credentials are encrypted at rest and in transit.
Customer-managed keys
Supported on Elastic Cloud Hosted via your cloud provider KMS, but only at the Enterprise subscription level; the key cannot yet be changed or removed once set.
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.
Role-based access controlPredefined cloud resource roles (Admin, Editor, Viewer, billing admin) for Hosted and Serverless; custom roles can be created on Serverless projects.Default Admin, Standard and Read-Only roles, plus support for custom roles.
Private networking / VPCAWS PrivateLink and Azure Private Link for Hosted and Serverless; GCP Private Service Connect for Hosted only. IP filtering can be combined with private connections.AWS PrivateLink supported for Agent and log traffic on supported Datadog sites.
Dedicated infrastructureElasticsearch nodes run in isolated containers under least privilege; containers have no means of communicating with containers from another cluster. Scope: container-level isolation between customer clusters; no dedicated-hardware option is offered on this page.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.

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

Elastic Cloud
No — The only free offer here is a trial; no ongoing free tier is listed beside the Hosted and Serverless plans.
Datadog
Yes
Sources (2) →
  • Elastic Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Elastic Cloud Serverless Zero operational load so that you can build faster Start free trial Elastic Cloud Hosted Deploy and scale on any cloud in minutes with ultimate control Start free trial”

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

  • 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

Entry paid plan

Elastic Cloud
Elastic Cloud Hosted Standard, cheapest of four subscription tiers: as low as $99 per month for a production config of 120 GB storage across 2 zones. Gold $114, Platinum $131, Enterprise $184 per month on the same config basis. Serverless is metered, no plan fee.
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.
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

Elastic Cloud
Three deployment options priced differently: Hosted is resource-based, Serverless is usage-based — both pay-as-you-go monthly or prepaid — and Self-managed is licensed by node count and RAM.
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.
Sources (2) →
  • Elastic Cloud Pricing ↗

    “Pricing Resource based pricing Pay as you go (monthly) or prepaid Usage based pricing Pay as you go (monthly) or prepaid License-based pricing Licensing based on number of nodes and used RAM”

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

  • 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

Regions

Elastic Cloud

Hosted: 60 regions across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud (also Alibaba Cloud and FedRAMP). Serverless: generally available on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.

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.

Sources (2) →
  • Elastic Cloud Pricing ↗

    “AWS, GCP, Azure, Alibaba, FedRamp — 60 regions across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Serverless currently generally available in AWS, GCP, and Azure.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • 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

Retention window

Elastic Cloud
No fixed window on Serverless: retention is priced per GB retained per month, as low as $0.017 (Logs Essentials) or $0.019 (Complete), and $0.005 for metrics.
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.
Sources (2) →

Self-hostable

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

    “Elastic self-managed subscriptions The Elastic Stack - Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Integrations - powers a variety of use cases. And we have flexible plans to help you get the most out of your on-prem subscriptions. [...] Available under the Elastic License. Select features are also available under SSPL or Apache License 2.0.”

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

  • 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

Ingest price per GB

Elastic Cloud
As low as $0.07 per GB ingested (logs, traces, RUM) on Serverless Observability Logs Essentials; as low as $0.09 on Observability Complete, with metrics at $0.023.
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.
Sources (2) →

Query price

Elastic Cloud
No separate query meter on Serverless Observability: billing is ingest plus retention only, with egress 50 GB free then $0.05 per GB.
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.
Sources (2) →

SOC 2

Elastic Cloud
SOC 2 Type 2 audit by Coalfire covers Elasticsearch Service and support subscriptions; report available on request via the Trust Center.
Datadog
SOC 2 Type 2 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
Sources (2) →

ISO 27001

Elastic Cloud
Information Security Program certified on ISO 27001, including ISO 27017 and ISO 27018.
Datadog
ISO/IEC 27001 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications, with the certificate a featured downloadable document.
Sources (2) →

HIPAA

Elastic Cloud
HIPAA business associate agreements available on all Elastic Cloud subscription tiers on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
Datadog
HIPAA listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
Sources (2) →

GDPR / data residency

Elastic Cloud
Operates in compliance with GDPR principles; customers can request a Data Processing Addendum through a support case.
Datadog
GDPR listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications; a Data Processing Addendum is available under Legal documents.
Sources (2) →

PCI DSS

Elastic Cloud
PCI DSS listed among the certifications in the Elastic Trust Center, alongside SOC 2, ISO 27001 and FedRAMP.
Datadog
PCI DSS listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications.
Sources (2) →

Encryption at rest

Elastic Cloud
Cluster data is encrypted at rest by default; TLS between Elasticsearch nodes and from the internet.
Datadog
Stored data is protected by encryption, access controls and authentication; integration credentials are encrypted at rest and in transit.
Sources (2) →

Customer-managed keys

Elastic Cloud
Supported on Elastic Cloud Hosted via your cloud provider KMS, but only at the Enterprise subscription level; the key cannot yet be changed or removed once set.
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.
Sources (2) →

Role-based access control

Elastic Cloud
Predefined cloud resource roles (Admin, Editor, Viewer, billing admin) for Hosted and Serverless; custom roles can be created on Serverless projects.
Datadog
Default Admin, Standard and Read-Only roles, plus support for custom roles.
Sources (2) →

Private networking / VPC

Elastic Cloud
AWS PrivateLink and Azure Private Link for Hosted and Serverless; GCP Private Service Connect for Hosted only. IP filtering can be combined with private connections.
Datadog
AWS PrivateLink supported for Agent and log traffic on supported Datadog sites.
Sources (2) →

Dedicated infrastructure

Elastic Cloud
Elasticsearch nodes run in isolated containers under least privilege; containers have no means of communicating with containers from another cluster. Scope: container-level isolation between customer clusters; no dedicated-hardware option is offered on this page.
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.
Sources (2) →
  • Elastic Cloud Security | Elastic ↗

    “Elasticsearch nodes run in isolated containers, configured according to the principle of least privilege, and with restrictions on system calls and allowed root operations. [...] Containers have no means of setting up communication with containers from another cluster.”

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

  • 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

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.

Credit card to startElastic Cloud: No
Uptime SLAElastic Cloud: 99.95% monthly, for the Platinum and Enterprise subscription tiers, on both Hosted and Serverless. Not applicable to self-managed, where the customer operates the infrastructure.
Events includedDatadog: 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.
Session replayDatadog: Supported — Billed separately from RUM, from $2.50 per 1,000 sessions; replays kept 30 days.
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.Elastic Cloud: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-22 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Elastic Cloud.
Hybrid search (vector + keyword)Elastic Cloud: Supported — combines vector similarity scores with BM25F text-relevance scores in a single hybrid query.
Metadata filteringElastic Cloud: Supported — vector search results can be filtered by metadata while preserving approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search speed.
Support on entry paid planElastic Cloud: Four support tiers, keyed to the Elastic Cloud subscription tier rather than bought separately. Platinum and Enterprise share an identical support SLA.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Elastic Cloud or Datadog?

Elastic Cloud: Elastic Cloud Hosted Standard, cheapest of four subscription tiers: as low as $99 per month for a production config of 120 GB storage across 2 zones. Gold $114, Platinum $131, Enterprise $184 per month on the same config basis. Serverless is metered, no plan fee.

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.

Free tier: Elastic Cloud or Datadog?

Elastic Cloud: No — The only free offer here is a trial; no ongoing free tier is listed beside the Hosted and Serverless plans.

Datadog: Yes

Should I choose Elastic Cloud or Datadog?

Pick Elastic Cloud if Teams that need full-text search and observability on the same underlying engine, or that want the option to self-host later — Elastic's dual identity as a search platform and an observability platform is the actual differentiator against single-purpose competitors.

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.

Provider pages

Elastic CloudManaged Elasticsearch, Kibana and Elastic Observability, hosted or serverless across AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.DatadogObservability suite priced per product — this profile follows Log Management, the closest analogue to the per-GB platforms it competes with.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.