Grafana Cloud is the better default for teams building an observability stack on a budget: its free tier includes 10,000 active Prometheus series plus 50 GB per month for each of its log and trace allowances. Datadog has broader stated coverage, including real-user and synthetic monitoring, but its free plan stops at five hosts and its paid infrastructure price is per host. Unless unified coverage across those extra products is worth the higher bill, Grafana Cloud gives a small engineering team more room to evaluate and grow.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Datadog | Grafana Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free available | Free available |
| Paid price | $15.00 USD/mo | $19.00 USD/mo |
| Infrastructure Monitoring | — | |
| Apm | — | |
| Log Management | — | |
| Real User Monitoring | — | |
| Synthetic Monitoring | — | |
| Security Monitoring | — | |
| Alerting | ||
| Anomaly Detection | — | |
| Self Hosted | — | |
| Free Trial Days | 14 | — |
| Prometheus Compatible | — | |
| Logs Ingestion | — | |
| Distributed Tracing | — | |
| On Call Scheduling | — | |
| Dashboard Templates | — | |
| Grafana Agent | — | |
| K8s Integration | — | |
| Data Retention Free | — | 13 months metrics |
| SSO support | — | Pro+ |
| Score | 8/10 | 8/10 |
Grafana Cloud
8
Datadog
8
Runner-up
Grafana Cloud wins for its useful free allowance. Native Prometheus compatibility and a clear starting price reinforce that choice. Datadog is the better fit when an organization needs its broader product coverage and accepts separate charges for each product area.
Pricing
Datadog's Free plan covers up to five hosts, but metric retention lasts only one day and log ingestion is limited. Pro infrastructure monitoring starts at $15 per host each month with annual billing, or $18 per host on demand. That rate is only one part of the bill: Datadog prices each product area separately, so a team using several areas should budget from expected usage rather than the infrastructure price alone. Charges for APM and log ingestion sit on top, and the same separate billing applies when you add other products.
Grafana Cloud Free has no time limit and includes 10,000 active Prometheus series plus 50 GB per month for each of its log and trace allowances. Logs and traces have 14-day retention, while the product data lists 13 months for free metrics. Pro adds a $19 monthly platform fee, then charges for usage above the free allowances, including $8 per 1,000 additional active series and $0.50 per extra GB of logs or traces. This is generous for a small workload, though metric cardinality or heavy ingestion can push the monthly cost up quickly.
Features and Workflow
Datadog brings together its core infrastructure view and APM. Log management is a separate product area, and its listed feature set also covers real-user monitoring. Synthetic checks and security monitoring are available too. Its 750-plus integrations cover common cloud and infrastructure services, while its product includes custom dashboards and full alerting with anomaly detection. That breadth suits teams that prefer a single SaaS vendor across several monitoring jobs, but it also means the final spend depends on which products are enabled.
Grafana Cloud centers on the managed LGTM stack. Loki handles logs, while Tempo handles traces. Grafana supplies dashboards and Mimir supports Prometheus metrics. Native Prometheus compatibility is a practical advantage for teams already sending data from a Prometheus setup, since the product data says they can remote-write to Mimir and keep existing recording and alerting rules. Grafana also lists more than 17 data sources and integrations. The dashboard and query workflow can go further than a ready-made monitoring view, but the product notes a steep learning curve for LogQL. Its alert manager and on-call setup are more complex than Datadog's.
Who Each Product Suits
Choose Grafana Cloud if the team already uses Prometheus or wants to test a managed monitoring setup without committing to a per-host subscription. The free allowances make it possible to send a representative workload before paying, and Pro has a defined platform fee with usage rates for extra volume. Keep an eye on active series and ingestion, since growth in either can change the bill. This is a good starting point for teams comfortable tuning their own queries and dashboards.
Datadog suits organizations that want one vendor for infrastructure and application monitoring, and may also need security or synthetic checks. The 750-plus integrations reduce the work of connecting common services, while the annual Pro price gives a clear baseline for infrastructure. The trade-off is that APM and other products add their own charges, and Datadog has no self-hosted option. Pick it when that consolidated coverage is worth paying for, not simply because it is familiar.