{
  "verifiedAt": "2026-08-24",
  "currency": "USD",
  "notes": "OBSL-COMPARE 2026-08-24 initial capture: all rates fetched live from official pricing pages on 2026-08-24 (see per-vendor capturedAt). Modeling honesty: Datadog indexing is per-1M-events officially; the $/GB-mo figures below use the industry-standard ≈1M events ≈ 1 GB approximation and say so. Event-priced platforms (Honeycomb, Sentry) and quote-based platforms (Sumo Logic) are priceCaptured:false — shown but never ranked, because normalizing them to $/GB would require invented event sizes or scan profiles. New Relic user fees and Grafana's fair-use retain ratio are excluded line items documented in per-vendor notes.",
  "modelInputs": {
    "gbPerDay": 10,
    "retentionDays": 30,
    "hosts": 10
  },
  "vendors": [
    {
      "slug": "datadog",
      "name": "Datadog",
      "vendor": "Datadog, Inc.",
      "url": "https://www.datadoghq.com/",
      "pricingUrl": "https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/list/",
      "currency": "USD",
      "ingestPerGb": 0.1,
      "indexPerGbMonth": 1.7,
      "includedRetentionDays": 0,
      "perHostMonth": 15,
      "platformFeeMonth": null,
      "freeIngestGbMonth": 0,
      "priceCaptured": true,
      "capturedAt": "2026-08-24",
      "notes": "Pro list: $0.10/GB ingest; indexed logs $1.06–2.50/1M events by retention window (15d = $1.70/1M Pro annual, ≈$1.70/GB-mo at the standard 1M-events≈1GB approximation); infra host $15/mo Pro annual ($18 monthly). Ingest-only logs are NOT searchable — indexing is a separate mandatory charge for any query use. No perpetual free tier.",
      "skipNote": "Skip unless you need its 800+ integrations under one roof — you are paying Big-3-cloud prices for logs plus a la carte everything else."
    },
    {
      "slug": "new-relic",
      "name": "New Relic",
      "vendor": "New Relic",
      "url": "https://newrelic.com/",
      "pricingUrl": "https://newrelic.com/pricing",
      "currency": "USD",
      "ingestPerGb": 0.4,
      "indexPerGbMonth": null,
      "includedRetentionDays": 8,
      "perHostMonth": null,
      "platformFeeMonth": null,
      "freeIngestGbMonth": 100,
      "priceCaptured": true,
      "capturedAt": "2026-08-24",
      "notes": "Original model $0.40/GB after 100 GB/mo free (Data Plus $0.60); retention ≥8d original, extended via Data Plus. EXCLUDED LINE ITEM: full-platform users $99–349/user/mo — a team of five can dwarf the ingest bill; this calculator covers usage only. Perpetual free tier: 100 GB/mo + 1 full user.",
      "skipNote": "Skip if your team needs more than one full platform seat — user fees, not data, become the bill."
    },
    {
      "slug": "grafana-cloud",
      "name": "Grafana Cloud",
      "vendor": "Grafana Labs",
      "url": "https://grafana.com/",
      "pricingUrl": "https://grafana.com/pricing/",
      "currency": "USD",
      "ingestPerGb": 0.45,
      "indexPerGbMonth": null,
      "includedRetentionDays": 30,
      "perHostMonth": 7.2,
      "platformFeeMonth": 19,
      "freeIngestGbMonth": 50,
      "priceCaptured": true,
      "capturedAt": "2026-08-24",
      "notes": "Loki logs ≈$0.45/GB combined (process $0.05 + write $0.40); 30-day retention included in the Pro fair-use retain ratio beyond which $0.10/GB-mo applies; Pro platform fee $19/mo includes 50 GB logs, 10k series, 2,232 host-hours. Kubernetes curated host billing opt-in ≈$7.20/host-mo ($0.010/host-hr). Volume discounts drop rates ~10%.",
      "skipNote": "Skip if you want zero assembly — Grafana Cloud is the cheapest serious stack here, but someone on the team owns dashboards and Loki query tuning."
    },
    {
      "slug": "better-stack",
      "name": "Better Stack",
      "vendor": "Better Stack",
      "url": "https://betterstack.com/",
      "pricingUrl": "https://betterstack.com/pricing",
      "currency": "USD",
      "ingestPerGb": 0.1,
      "indexPerGbMonth": 0.05,
      "includedRetentionDays": 30,
      "perHostMonth": null,
      "platformFeeMonth": 25,
      "freeIngestGbMonth": 40,
      "priceCaptured": true,
      "capturedAt": "2026-08-24",
      "notes": "Telemetry bundles: Nano $25/mo annual includes 40 GB each of logs/traces/metrics with 30-day retention; overage ≈$0.10/GB ingest + $0.05/GB-mo retention, everything searchable. Overage rates verified via Better Stack's own comparison/community pages rather than the interactive pricing SPA. Free tier: 3 GB logs (3-day retention).",
      "skipNote": "Skip if you need deep APM/profiling — Better Stack is logs+uptime-first; pairing it with a profiler is common."
    },
    {
      "slug": "axiom",
      "name": "Axiom",
      "vendor": "Axiom Security Ltd",
      "url": "https://axiom.co/",
      "pricingUrl": "https://axiom.co/pricing",
      "currency": "USD",
      "ingestPerGb": 0.12,
      "indexPerGbMonth": null,
      "includedRetentionDays": 30,
      "perHostMonth": null,
      "platformFeeMonth": 25,
      "freeIngestGbMonth": 1000,
      "priceCaptured": true,
      "capturedAt": "2026-08-24",
      "notes": "$25/mo Axiom Cloud plan includes 1 TB/mo ingest + 100 GB-hrs query compute; overage ingest from $0.12/GB; storage/query compute billed separately in-console (rates unpublished). Personal plan is permanently free: 500 GB/mo ingest, 30-day retention. Object-storage economics are why the floor here is so low.",
      "skipNote": "Skip if you rely on a mature alerting/ecosystem layer — Axiom wins on raw ingest economics, not breadth."
    },
    {
      "slug": "dynatrace",
      "name": "Dynatrace",
      "vendor": "Dynatrace LLC",
      "url": "https://www.dynatrace.com/",
      "pricingUrl": "https://www.dynatrace.com/pricing/",
      "currency": "USD",
      "ingestPerGb": 0.2,
      "indexPerGbMonth": 0.02,
      "includedRetentionDays": 10,
      "perHostMonth": 29,
      "platformFeeMonth": null,
      "freeIngestGbMonth": 0,
      "priceCaptured": true,
      "capturedAt": "2026-08-24",
      "notes": "DPS rate card: Log Monitoring bundled-queries model $0.20/GiB ingest + $0.02/GiB-day incl. queries (min 10–35d retention); pay-per-query alternative adds $0.0035/GiB scanned instead. Infrastructure monitoring $29/host/mo; full-stack $58/8-GiB host. No perpetual free tier. Enterprise commit pricing negotiable below card.",
      "skipNote": "Skip for small estates — per-host monitoring fees dominate below ~50 hosts; the AI/smarts premium needs scale to amortize."
    },
    {
      "slug": "sumo-logic",
      "name": "Sumo Logic",
      "vendor": "Sumo Logic",
      "url": "https://www.sumologic.com/",
      "pricingUrl": "https://www.sumologic.com/pricing/",
      "currency": "USD",
      "ingestPerGb": null,
      "indexPerGbMonth": null,
      "includedRetentionDays": null,
      "perHostMonth": null,
      "platformFeeMonth": null,
      "freeIngestGbMonth": null,
      "priceCaptured": false,
      "capturedAt": "2026-08-24",
      "notes": "NOT RANKED: no public flat $/GB — official estimator implies an effective $2.05–3.14/GB depending on scan profile (US region; +10–20% other regions), i.e. quote-driven pricing that cannot be honestly modeled without your scan profile. Retention up to 365 days customer-defined. No perpetual free tier (30-day trial).",
      "skipNote": "Skip if you want predictable bills — effective per-GB cost varies ~50% with scan profile alone."
    },
    {
      "slug": "honeycomb",
      "name": "Honeycomb",
      "vendor": "Honeycomb.io",
      "url": "https://www.honeycomb.io/",
      "pricingUrl": "https://www.honeycomb.io/pricing",
      "currency": "USD",
      "ingestPerGb": null,
      "indexPerGbMonth": null,
      "includedRetentionDays": 60,
      "perHostMonth": null,
      "platformFeeMonth": null,
      "freeIngestGbMonth": null,
      "priceCaptured": false,
      "capturedAt": "2026-08-24",
      "notes": "NOT RANKED: priced per EVENT (Pro from $150/mo for 50M events ≈ $3/M events, 60-day retention, unlimited seats) — a $/GB normalization requires assuming an average event size we refuse to invent. Generous free tier: 20M events + 100M datapoints/mo. Best suited to high-cardinality debugging, not bulk log archival.",
      "skipNote": "Not a log-archival play at all — skip for compliance retention; consider for interactive debugging."
    },
    {
      "slug": "sentry",
      "name": "Sentry",
      "vendor": "Functional Software, Inc.",
      "url": "https://sentry.io/",
      "pricingUrl": "https://sentry.io/pricing/",
      "currency": "USD",
      "ingestPerGb": null,
      "indexPerGbMonth": null,
      "includedRetentionDays": 90,
      "perHostMonth": null,
      "platformFeeMonth": null,
      "freeIngestGbMonth": null,
      "priceCaptured": false,
      "capturedAt": "2026-08-24",
      "notes": "NOT RANKED: error/crash tracking first (Team $26/mo base, quota-based errors/spans/logs; logs add-on $0.50/GB) — its 5 GB/mo included log volume shows the product is not aiming to be your log pipeline. Included for completeness of the observability-bill conversation, not compared on $/GB.",
      "skipNote": "Complements a logging stack rather than replacing it — budget it alongside, not instead."
    }
  ],
  "rankingAtDefaultInputs": [
    {
      "slug": "datadog",
      "rank": 6,
      "monthlyTotalUsd": 690.4,
      "multipleOfCheapest": 27.6
    },
    {
      "slug": "new-relic",
      "rank": 3,
      "monthlyTotalUsd": 81.60000000000001,
      "multipleOfCheapest": 3.3
    },
    {
      "slug": "grafana-cloud",
      "rank": 4,
      "monthlyTotalUsd": 205.3,
      "multipleOfCheapest": 8.2
    },
    {
      "slug": "better-stack",
      "rank": 2,
      "monthlyTotalUsd": 51.400000000000006,
      "multipleOfCheapest": 2.1
    },
    {
      "slug": "axiom",
      "rank": 1,
      "monthlyTotalUsd": 25,
      "multipleOfCheapest": 1
    },
    {
      "slug": "dynatrace",
      "rank": 5,
      "monthlyTotalUsd": 354.8,
      "multipleOfCheapest": 14.2
    },
    {
      "slug": "sumo-logic",
      "rank": null,
      "monthlyTotalUsd": null,
      "multipleOfCheapest": null
    },
    {
      "slug": "honeycomb",
      "rank": null,
      "monthlyTotalUsd": null,
      "multipleOfCheapest": null
    },
    {
      "slug": "sentry",
      "rank": null,
      "monthlyTotalUsd": null,
      "multipleOfCheapest": null
    }
  ],
  "datadogMultipleOfCheapest": 27.6
}