Observability Cost Calculator

Estimate total observability platform cost from logs, metrics and traces ingested.

About Observability Cost Calculator

Total observability spend is the sum of what each pillar costs under your vendor's pricing model: monthly = logs_cost + metrics_cost + traces_cost, where each is volume × unit price under that vendor's specific pricing dimension (per-GB for logs/traces, per-series for metrics). Because vendors price these very differently — some charge per-GB across all three pillars, others charge per-host or per-series for metrics — plugging in your specific vendor's rates lets you compare total cost of ownership across providers on equal footing.

Formula

monthly_cost = logs_GB_per_month × cost_per_GB_logs + metrics_series × cost_per_series + traces_GB_per_month × cost_per_GB_traces

logs_GB_per_month: Monthly log volume (GB)
cost_per_GB_logs: Cost per GB of log storage/ingestion
metrics_series: Active metric time series
cost_per_series: Cost per metric series
traces_GB_per_month: Monthly trace volume (GB)
cost_per_GB_traces: Cost per GB of trace storage

Worked example

With the default values below, Observability Cost Calculator returns Total Monthly Cost of $2,050.00. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Logs Volumeaccepts 0–10,000,000 GB/month: 2,000 GB/month
Logs Costaccepts 0–100 $/GB: 0.5 $/GB
Active Metric Seriesaccepts 0–1,000,000,000 series: 50,000 series
Metrics Costaccepts 0–1,000 $/1000 series/month: 12 $/1000 series/month
Traces Volumeaccepts 0–10,000,000 GB/month: 300 GB/month
Traces Costaccepts 0–100 $/GB: 1.5 $/GB

Results

Total Monthly Cost: $2,050.00
Projected Annual Cost: $24,600.00
Logs Cost: $1,000.00
Metrics Cost: $600.00
Traces Cost: $450.00
Logs Share of Spend: 48.8%
Metrics Share of Spend: 29.3%
Traces Share of Spend: 22.0%

Step by step

1Logs cost: volume × price/GB= $1000.00
2Metrics cost: series ÷ 1000 × price= $600.00
3Traces cost: volume × price/GB= $450.00
4Total monthly: logs + metrics + traces= $2050.00

Assumptions and limits

The result is derived only from the 6 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax or compounding frequency into account.
Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do metrics get priced per-series instead of per-GB?

Metrics pricing is usually driven by cardinality (how many unique time series exist) rather than raw data volume, since each series requires ongoing storage and indexing regardless of how many data points it contains — high-cardinality labels (e.g. per-user or per-request-ID tags) can explode series count and cost.

How can I reduce observability costs without losing visibility?

Lower log verbosity in production (shift to sampling or structured summaries), reduce trace sampling rate, drop or aggregate high-cardinality metric labels, and set tighter retention windows on less critical data.

Which pillar usually dominates observability spend?

It varies by architecture, but logs are frequently the largest cost driver for verbose applications, while metrics cardinality dominates for microservice architectures with many labeled dimensions (per-pod, per-endpoint, per-customer).

Should I compare vendors using this same formula?

Yes — running the same volume/cardinality inputs through each vendor's actual per-unit pricing surfaces true cost differences, since list prices per GB or per series can vary by more than 2-3× between vendors for comparable data.