Vendor comparison
Six vendors, three scenarios, side by side
A vendor-neutral comparison of Datadog, New Relic, Grafana Cloud, Dynatrace, Splunk, and Elastic. List pricing only, no opinions on which one your team should buy.
TL;DR
Cheapest at scale: Grafana Cloud or self-hosted Prometheus. Easiest: Datadog. Best free tier: New Relic and Grafana Cloud. Enterprise default: Datadog or Dynatrace, with negotiated pricing. Below is the full breakdown.
Methodology
How we priced each vendor
| Vendor | Pricing model | Free tier | Infra (per-host equiv.) | APM | Logs ingest | Pricing page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Datadog | Per host + per-unit add-ons | 5 hosts, 1-day retention, no APM/logs | $18/host/mo | $31/host/mo | $0.1/GB | verify |
New Relic | Per GB data ingest + per user seat | 100 GB/month ingest free, 1 full-platform user | ingest | n/a | $0.3/GB | verify |
Grafana Cloud | Per active series + per GB logs/traces + per user | 10K active series, 50 GB logs, 50 GB traces, 3 users | ingest | n/a | $0.5/GB | verify |
Dynatrace | DPS (Davis Platform Subscription), capability units | 15-day trial only | $21/host/mo | $48/host/mo | $0.2/GB | verify |
Elastic Cloud | Resource-based (compute + storage) deployment size | 14-day trial; self-hosted OSS is free | $8/host/mo | $6/host/mo | $0.12/GB | verify |
Splunk Cloud | Workload pricing or per GB/day ingest | 500 MB/day ingest (Splunk Cloud trial) | ingest | $22/host/mo | $4.5/GB | verify |
Scenario
Startup, 10 hosts
| Vendor | Infra | APM | Logs | Custom metrics | Total / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Grafana Cloud | $0 | $0 | $50 | $0 | $50 |
New Relic | $0 | $0 | $74 | $0 | $74 |
Elastic Cloud | $80 | $30 | $18 | $0 | $128 |
Dynatrace | $210 | $240 | $30 | $0 | $480 |
Splunk Cloud | $0 | $110 | $675 | $0 | $785 |
Datadog | $180 | $155 | $1,035 | $1 | $1,371 |
Scenario
Mid-market, 100 hosts
| Vendor | Infra | APM | Logs | Custom metrics | Total / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Grafana Cloud | $0 | $0 | $1,088 | $200 | $1,288 |
Elastic Cloud | $800 | $300 | $270 | $0 | $1,370 |
New Relic | $891 | $0 | $1,508 | $0 | $2,399 |
Dynatrace | $2,100 | $2,400 | $450 | $0 | $4,950 |
Splunk Cloud | $0 | $1,100 | $10,125 | $0 | $11,225 |
Datadog | $1,800 | $1,550 | $15,450 | $10 | $18,810 |
Scenario
Enterprise, 1,000 hosts
| Vendor | Infra | APM | Logs | Custom metrics | Total / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Elastic Cloud | $8,000 | $4,200 | $4,500 | $0 | $16,700 |
Grafana Cloud | $0 | $0 | $18,688 | $3,520 | $22,208 |
New Relic | $9,801 | $0 | $27,150 | $0 | $36,951 |
Dynatrace | $21,000 | $33,600 | $7,500 | $0 | $62,100 |
Splunk Cloud | $0 | $15,400 | $168,750 | $0 | $184,150 |
Datadog | $18,000 | $21,700 | $256,500 | $150 | $296,350 |
Enterprise totals reflect list pricing only. At this tier vendors typically negotiate 20 to 50 percent off list with annual or multi-year commitments. Treat the table as a negotiation baseline, not a quote.
Verdict by use case
Pick the model that matches your fleet
Best for startups
Grafana Cloud or New Relic. Both have free tiers that cover small fleets without a credit card. Grafana wins if your team is comfortable with Prometheus; New Relic wins if you want one ingest meter and a managed UX.
Best free tier
Tied between New Relic (100 GB/month ingest, 1 user) and Grafana Cloud (10K active series, 50 GB logs, 50 GB traces, 3 users).
Best for K8s-heavy stacks
Datadog and Dynatrace if budget allows; Grafana Cloud if you can manage cardinality. The active-series model rewards careful label discipline. Per-host pricing punishes ephemeral pods.
Best for log-heavy workloads
Elastic Cloud, Grafana Loki, or self-hosted ELK. Splunk has the most powerful query language but the highest list price. Datadog's split ingest/index meter punishes verbose logging.
Best with a strong platform team
Self-hosted Prometheus plus Grafana plus Loki plus Tempo. License cost zero, infrastructure and engineering time non-trivial. See open-source-vs-paid TCO page.
Best for enterprise compliance
Splunk and Dynatrace remain dominant in regulated environments. Datadog is closing the gap. Negotiated rates and committed-use discounts are the norm at this tier.
Where to go next
Open the calculator →
Plug in your own numbers and see all six vendors at once.
Datadog pricing deep dive →
The market leader, line-item by line-item.
Log management pricing →
Splunk vs Datadog vs Elastic, normalised per GB.
Open source vs paid TCO →
When self-hosted Prometheus beats SaaS, and when it does not.
Vendors covered: Datadog, New Relic, Grafana Cloud, Dynatrace, Elastic Cloud, Splunk Cloud.