Monitoring Cost Calculator

Estimate observability platform costs from metrics, logs, and APM trace volumes.

Number of hosts

Custom metrics per host

Price per 100 metrics ($)

Log ingestion (GB/day)

Log ingestion price per GB ($)

Log retention (days)

APM spans per month

APM price per million spans ($)

Tab to move between fields

Total monthly cost

$336.70

≈ 6 tanks of gas

Annual cost

$4,040.40

≈ 4 smartphones

Metrics + infra cost / month$300.50

Logs cost / month$34.50

APM cost / month$1.70

Cost per host / month$16.84

Total custom metrics1,000

Log ingestion (GB/month)300

Metrics % of total89

Logs % of total10

APM % of total1

How to Use This Calculator

Enter the number of Hosts and Custom Metrics per Host.
Input the Metric Price per 100 metrics, Log Ingestion (GB/day), and Log Price per GB.
Set Log Retention Days and APM Spans per Month with the APM price per million spans.
Review Total Monthly Monitoring Cost and Annual Cost.
Use the breakdown by Metrics, Logs, and APM to identify which tier drives the most spend.

How the result changes with Number of hosts

Number of hosts: Total servers, VMs, or containers being monitored.
Custom metrics per host: Application-level custom metrics emitted per host.
Price per 100 metrics ($): Monthly cost per 100 custom metric time series.
Log ingestion (GB/day): Total log data ingested per day across all sources.
Log ingestion price per GB ($): Cost per GB of log data ingested (Datadog ~$0.10, Splunk ~$2+).
Log retention (days): How many days to retain searchable logs.
APM spans per month: Total distributed trace spans ingested per month.
APM price per million spans ($): Cost per million APM spans (Datadog ~$1.70/M).

Total monthly cost: Combined observability platform cost per month.
Annual cost: Projected 12-month observability spend.
Metrics + infra cost / month: Monthly cost for metrics collection and host monitoring.
Logs cost / month: Monthly cost for log ingestion and retention.
APM cost / month: Monthly cost for distributed tracing.
Cost per host / month: Average observability cost per monitored host.
Total custom metrics: Total custom metric time series across all hosts.
Log ingestion (GB/month): Total log data ingested per month.
Metrics % of total: Percentage of bill from metrics/infrastructure.
Logs % of total: Percentage of bill from log management.
APM % of total: Percentage of bill from APM/tracing.

Identify Input Parameters
4 parameters
Number of hosts = 20, Custom metrics per host = 50, Price per 100 metrics ($) = 0.05, Log ingestion (GB/day) = 10 = 8 input(s) provided
Calculate Total monthly cost
Total monthly cost = metricsCostMonthly + hostMonitoringCost + logIngestionCost + logStorageCost +...
336.7 = $336.7
Calculate Annual cost
Annual cost = totalMonthlyCost * 12
4040.4 = $4,040.4
Calculate Metrics + infra cost / month
Metrics + infra cost / month = round((metricsCostMonthly + hostMonitoringCost) * 100) / 100
300.5 = $300.5
Calculate Logs cost / month
Logs cost / month = round((logIngestionCost + logStorageCost) * 100) / 100
34.5 = $34.5