# Datadog

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/observability/datadog/

Observability suite priced per product — this profile follows Log Management, the closest analogue to the per-GB platforms it competes with.

## Who it suits

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

Consider something else if 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.

## Adoption signals

- Detected running on 238,171 live sites (BuiltWith, checked 2026-09-12)

## iScore

64 / 100 (80% interval 58–70), rank 6 of 9 in observability — interval overlaps the next rank, so this is an ordering, not a finding.

inetGeek's own reading, computed from sourced facts against category peers by disclosed rules. Not a provider claim. Intervals are 80%; a provider with few documented facts is pulled toward the category middle rather than scored on what little is known.
Read this score with care:
- Price is thin: 3 of 7 criteria are scored, so it sits near the category middle with a wide interval (48–81). Read the interval, not the point.
- Documented but not scored, because the page states it as text with no comparable number or a yes/limited/no (a one-time, usage-based or other-vendor price, or a per-site choice): minimum_paid_price, query_price. Read them on the provider page; the score neither rewards nor penalises what it could not compare.

Method: https://inetgeek.com/iscore/. Full output with every criterion's basis: https://inetgeek.com/scores.json. Every observability peer ranked: https://inetgeek.com/observability/datadog/alternatives/

- Price: 64 (48–81), weight 31%, 3 of 7 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: free_allowance, free_card_required, minimum_paid_price, query_price
- Capacity and limits: 42 (27–57), weight 18%, 3 of 3 criteria scored
- Capabilities: 72 (66–79), weight 12%, 2 of 2 criteria scored
- Trust and compliance: 85 (78–91), weight 18%, 11 of 13 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: support_included, uptime_sla
- Evidence: 92 (92–92), weight 10%, 4 of 4 criteria scored
- Adoption: 25 (15–35), weight 10%, 1 of 2 criteria scored

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: Yes ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)
- Kind of free offer: Free trial ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)
- 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. ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)
- 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. ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)

### 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. ([source](https://docs.datadoghq.com/getting_started/site/), read 2026-09-13)

### 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. ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)
- 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. ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)
- Session replay: Supported — Billed separately from RUM, from $2.50 per 1,000 sessions; replays kept 30 days. ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-14)
- Self-hostable: Limited — BYOC Logs runs the log engine in your own environment; Datadog hosts the UI, pipeline config and query routing. ([source](https://docs.datadoghq.com/byoc-logs/introduction/architecture/), read 2026-09-13)
- 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. ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)
- 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. ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/?product=archive-search), read 2026-09-13)

### Auth

- Audit logs: 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. ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/trust/), read 2026-09-21)

### Compliance

- SOC 2: SOC 2 Type 2 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications. ([source](https://trust.datadoghq.com/), read 2026-09-14)
- ISO 27001: ISO/IEC 27001 listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications, with the certificate a featured downloadable document. ([source](https://trust.datadoghq.com/), read 2026-09-12)
- HIPAA: HIPAA listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications. ([source](https://trust.datadoghq.com/), read 2026-09-14)
- GDPR / data residency: GDPR listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications; a Data Processing Addendum is available under Legal documents. ([source](https://trust.datadoghq.com/), read 2026-09-12)
- PCI DSS: PCI DSS listed among Datadog's own compliance certifications. ([source](https://trust.datadoghq.com/), read 2026-09-14)
- Encryption at rest: Stored data is protected by encryption, access controls and authentication; integration credentials are encrypted at rest and in transit. ([source](https://docs.datadoghq.com/data_security/), read 2026-09-13)
- 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. ([source](https://docs.datadoghq.com/logs/log_configuration/archives/), read 2026-09-13)
- Role-based access control: Default Admin, Standard and Read-Only roles, plus support for custom roles. ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/security/), read 2026-09-14)
- Private networking / VPC: AWS PrivateLink supported for Agent and log traffic on supported Datadog sites. ([source](https://docs.datadoghq.com/agent/guide/private-link/), read 2026-09-13)
- 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. ([source](https://www.datadoghq.com/product/byoc-logs/), read 2026-09-13)

## Compared with

- [Datadog vs Grafana Cloud](https://inetgeek.com/compare/datadog-vs-grafana-cloud/)
- [Datadog vs SigNoz](https://inetgeek.com/compare/datadog-vs-signoz/)
- [Datadog vs OpenObserve](https://inetgeek.com/compare/datadog-vs-openobserve/)
- [Datadog vs Sentry](https://inetgeek.com/compare/datadog-vs-sentry/)
- [Datadog vs Elastic Cloud](https://inetgeek.com/compare/elastic-cloud-vs-datadog/)
- [Datadog vs Axiom](https://inetgeek.com/compare/axiom-vs-datadog/)
- [Datadog vs Better Stack](https://inetgeek.com/compare/betterstack-vs-datadog/)
- [Datadog vs GlitchTip](https://inetgeek.com/compare/datadog-vs-glitchtip/)