What will logging cost at your GB-per-month volume, and who is cheapest?

Enter your GB of logs ingested per month and growth rate. Get Datadog Logs, Grafana Cloud Logs, Axiom, Better Stack and Papertrail priced side by side, the 12-month spend, and the log volumes (GB per month) where the cheapest provider changes — before you build on one and find out when the invoice arrives.

Nothing is uploaded. Calculated in this browser from numbers you enter and approximate list prices you can edit. It cannot see your plan or your invoice.

1. Your log usage

GB of logs ingested per month today

Growth in volume per month (%)

Monthly budget in USD (optional)

Budget applies to

2. Comparison

Provider	Per month	Per year	12-month spend with growth

Where the cheapest provider changes

GB ingested per month	Cheapest

Several providers are $0 at small sizes, so the first rows are ties. A free tier is not always enough: check retention, search limits and seat caps at each vendor. Pay-as-you-go GB is simplest, but flat-fee plans (Axiom, Papertrail) include a pool of GB you may already be paying for.

Rate cards (editable)

Provider	Free up to (GB/mo)	First paid plan (USD/mo)	GB in first plan	Overage per GB

Plans beyond the first stay at the defaults here; use the CLI --prices file to edit every plan. Press Compare after changing a value.

Prefer a CLI, or want a budget gate in CI?

node cli.mjs compare --gb 300 --growth 6
node cli.mjs compare --gb 800 --provider grafana --budget 300   # exit 1 over budget
node cli.mjs crossover
node cli.mjs compare --gb 300 --prices prices.json --json

Get cli.mjs and engine.mjs — Node 18+, nothing to install, no network call. More: how to choose a log-management tool.

Common questions

Does this read my logging account?

No. It uses only the monthly log volume (GB ingested) you type and rate cards you can edit. It cannot see your plan, retention settings, contract or invoice. Treat every figure as a way to compare options, never as what you will be charged.

Where do the prices come from?

They are approximate public list prices as best known in 2025, shown with an as-of line, and every number is editable. Vendors split ingest, indexing and retention fees differently and change packaging often, so check each vendor's pricing page before deciding.

What is not included?

Longer retention, indexing and rehydration fees, seats, alerting, archives, support plans and committed-use discounts. These are often the real bill, so use this to compare the per-GB line, not to forecast the whole invoice. Query speed, search features and how much you actually need to keep are not priced here and often matter more than a few dollars.

Is my data uploaded anywhere?

No. The page calculates in your browser and sends nothing. The CLI reads local files and makes no network call.