Datadog APM and Log Management billing covers two of Datadog’s largest usage-based product lines. APM (application performance monitoring) is priced per APM host, with span volumes included per host. Log Management is priced by volume: per gigabyte ingested and per million log events indexed, with the indexing rate depending on the retention period.[4] Database Monitoring uses the same host-based method as APM and is covered here as well. The commercial framework is described in Datadog licensing.
Editions
APM
APM comes in three tiers. All include distributed tracing, and Universal Service Monitoring is included at no extra cost.[3]
| Tier (catalog SKU) | Adds | Annual / month-to-month / on-demand per APM host (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| APM | Distributed tracing, service maps, 15-day indexed span retention | 31 / 36 / 36[2] |
| APM Pro | Data Streams Monitoring | 35 / 42 / 42[2] |
| APM Enterprise | Continuous Profiler with four profiled containers per host | 40 / 48 / 48[2] |
The pricing page says APM tiers can be bought standalone, without Infrastructure Monitoring. Standalone prices are USD 36, 41 and 47 per host per month billed annually.[1] If APM is bought on the Infrastructure Monitoring pricing model instead, every APM host must also have Pro or Enterprise Infrastructure Monitoring. This applies to committed and on-demand usage.[1] The pricing page’s tier cards give on-demand figures of USD 48, 54 and 60 “with Infrastructure Monitoring attached”. These differ from the on-demand column of the price list, so the Order is the reference for actual rates.[1][2] A customer can commit to only one APM tier across all its APM hosts.[1] Catalog: APM bought on the Infrastructure pricing model needs Infrastructure on every APM host; APM tiers cannot be mixed across hosts.
Log Management
Log Management prices ingestion and storage separately:[1][2]
| Component (catalog SKU) | Unit | Annual / month-to-month / on-demand (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Ingestion | Per GB ingested, per month | 0.10 / 0.10 / 0.10 |
| Standard Indexing, 3-day retention | Per 1M log events, per month | 1.06 / 1.27 / 1.59 |
| Standard Indexing, 7-day retention | Per 1M log events, per month | 1.27 / 1.52 / 1.91 |
| Standard Indexing, 15-day retention | Per 1M log events, per month | 1.70 / 2.04 / 2.55 |
| Standard Indexing, 30-day retention | Per 1M log events, per month | 2.50 / 3.00 / 3.75 |
| Flex Logs Storage | Per 1M events stored, per month | 0.05 / 0.06 / 0.075 |
| Flex Logs Starter | Per 1M events stored (3 to 15 months retention), per month | 0.60 / 0.72 / 0.90 |
| Forwarding to custom destinations | Per GB outbound, per destination | 0.25 / 0.25 / 0.25 |
Standard Indexing supports monitors and Watchdog Insights, and Flex Logs does not. An index can use either tier or both.[1] Log Management can be bought without Infrastructure Monitoring or APM.[1]
Database Monitoring
Database Monitoring costs USD 70 per database host per month billed annually, or USD 84 month-to-month or on demand.[2] Each database host includes 200 normalized queries per month. Configured normalized queries above that number are billed.[3]
Metrics
| Unit | Catalog row | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| APM host | APM host | A host actively generating traces submitted to Datadog, including an OpenTelemetry Collector.[1] |
| Indexed span | Indexed span | A request against a service, charged on the number of spans indexed by retention filters.[4] |
| Ingested span | Ingested span GB | Charged on gigabytes of spans ingested into APM.[4] |
| Database host | Database host | Unique database hosts monitored with Database Monitoring each hour.[4] |
| Log | Ingested log GB | Gigabytes of logs submitted to the Logs service.[4] |
| Log event | Indexed log event | A log indexed by the Logs service, charged per million at the rate for the selected retention.[4] |
Counting / floors
APM hosts
Only hosts that actively send traces are APM hosts. Hosts running uninstrumented services, such as databases, caches, queues and load balancers, do not count even if APM is enabled on them.[1] Datadog records concurrent APM hosts once an hour. On the high watermark plan, it orders the hourly measurements at the end of the month and charges on the ninth highest, or the eighth highest in February.[3] Datadog’s FAQ calls this billing on 99th-percentile usage.[3] Database Monitoring hosts are counted the same way.[3] Catalog: Only hosts generating traces are billable APM hosts; APM and Database Monitoring hosts are billed on the ninth-highest hourly measurement.
APM is billed on hosts, not services. The number of containers on a host does not change the host price, and in Kubernetes APM is priced by node, not by pod.[1][3] If one Agent runs per container instead of per host, each container is treated as a host. The cost then becomes the APM host price multiplied by the number of containers.[3] Fargate tasks are billed on the average number of tasks sending traces per hour across the month. Each task includes 195,000 indexed spans and 30 GB of ingested spans.[3] Serverless APM has no billable APM hosts. It is billed on Lambda invocations connected to ingested spans, plus indexed spans above the bundled quantity.[8]
Spans
Each APM host includes 1 million indexed spans and 150 GB of ingested spans per month.[3] Both allotments are summed across all APM hosts. For example, two hosts that ingest 250 GB and 50 GB in a month pay no ingestion charge.[1] Spans that Datadog retains automatically do not count against the indexed-span allotment.[1] Above the allotment, ingested spans cost USD 0.10 per GB. Indexed spans cost USD 1.27, 1.70 or 2.50 per million per month for 7, 15 or 30 days of retention, billed annually.[2] Span-based metrics count towards the custom metrics allotment.[1] Catalog: APM span allotments are summed across all APM hosts.
On-demand use is metered differently. Span allotments are metered each hour and are not pooled across the month. An hour above the hourly allotment (0.205 GB and about 1,370 indexed spans per host hour) is billed regardless of other hours.[1][7] From August 2026, Datadog has been moving accounts, on a rolling basis, to pool cumulative allotments such as spans across all hours of the billing period. This does not apply to usage billed through external marketplaces.[6] Catalog: On-demand APM span allotments are metered each hour.
A worked example from Datadog’s documentation, at annual rates: five APM hosts sending 30 million indexed spans and 900 GB of ingested spans cost USD 155 for hosts. On top of that come USD 42.50 for 25 million extra indexed spans and USD 15 for 150 GB of extra ingested spans, USD 212.50 per month in total.[3]
Continuous Profiler
APM Enterprise and standalone Continuous Profiler hosts include four profiled containers per host. The allotment is aggregated across all hosts, and each extra container costs USD 2 per month.[4] Only containers running the profiler count.[3]
Logs
Ingestion is billed per GB of uncompressed data ingested for processing, or per GB of compressed data scanned to rehydrate logs from archives.[1] Forwarding to S3, Google Cloud Storage and Azure Storage archives is included in the ingestion price. Forwarding to other destinations, such as an external SIEM, costs USD 0.25 per GB per destination.[1] Rehydrated events are charged at the contracted indexing rate for the retention period selected.[1] Log-based metrics count towards the custom metrics allotment.[1] Catalog: Log ingestion is billed per GB of uncompressed data; Log-based metrics count towards the custom metrics allotment.
The customer commits to a monthly volume of indexed log events. Because the commitment is monthly, a single day’s spike does not cause overage if the month’s average is close to the commitment.[5] At the end of the month, Datadog totals the indexed events. If they are below the commitment, the bill does not change. If they are above it, the committed amount is subtracted and the excess is charged as on-demand usage with a 50% premium.[5] The pricing page describes the same rule as paying 50% above the annual price on the excess volume.[1] Logs products use the monthly on-demand option by default.[6] On-demand customers get 15-day retention by default.[1] Catalog: Indexed logs above the monthly commitment are charged with a 50% premium.
Flex Logs are metered hourly per million events stored, and each million events is billed for at least 30 days (minimum USD 0.05).[1] A million events kept for 60 days is therefore charged twice. Catalog: Flex Logs storage is billed for a minimum of 30 days per million events.
Floors. There is no minimum on the price list. Logs commitments, and APM host and span commitments, are set in the Order.[2][6]
Virtualization & partitioning
APM, Continuous Profiler and Database Monitoring count hosts, so a VM or Kubernetes node counts as one host whatever the number of containers or pods on it.[3] Running one Agent per container turns each container into a billable host.[3] Log Management is volume-based and does not depend on where the logs come from.
Cloud / BYOL
There is no bring-your-own-licence option, because both products run as Datadog-hosted services. Log archives are kept in the customer’s own cloud storage. Datadog charges for rehydrating them by the compressed GB scanned, not for storing them.[1]
Programs
APM, Database Monitoring and logs are sold at annual, month-to-month or on-demand rates.[2] The way commitments, allotments and on-demand usage combine is covered in Datadog commitments, allotments and subscription terms.
Out of scope
- Real User Monitoring, Synthetic Monitoring, Error Tracking and LLM or Agent Observability, which have their own units on the price list.
- Observability Pipelines and Sensitive Data Scanner, which are priced separately.
- APM for edge devices, which Datadog offers on request at a reduced price per device.
- Cloud SIEM, which bills analyzed log events separately from Log Management.