Elastic Cloud Serverless is Elastic’s fully managed deployment option, in which Elastic manages hardware, cluster size, node count and versions and the customer pays by usage.[6] Unlike Elastic Cloud Hosted, which is priced by the RAM of the nodes a customer configures, Serverless is billed on what a project consumes: compute units for Elasticsearch projects, and ingested and retained data for Observability and Security projects.[1][2][3] Both can be paid monthly as you go or prepaid.[6] The organization’s Elastic Cloud subscription level (Standard, Gold, Platinum or Enterprise) sets the support level, which is charged on top as a share of consumption.[5]
The rates below are the “as low as” list rates Elastic publishes; rates vary by cloud provider and region, and the full table is the Elastic Cloud pricing table.
Editions
| Project type | Feature tier | Ingest | Retention (per GB per month) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elasticsearch | (single tier) | Ingest VCU from $0.14 per VCU-hour; Search VCU from $0.09; ML VCU from $0.07 | From $0.047 | [1] |
| Observability | Logs Essentials | From $0.07 per GB | From $0.017 | [2] |
| Observability | Complete | From $0.09 per GB (logs, traces); $0.023 (metrics) | $0.019 (logs, traces); $0.005 (metrics) | [2] |
| Security | Security Analytics Essentials | From $0.09 per GB | From $0.017 | [3] |
| Security | Security Analytics Complete | From $0.11 per GB | From $0.019 | [3] |
Egress is 50 GB free per month, then $0.05 per GB, on Observability and Security projects; Elasticsearch egress is from $0.05 per GB.[1][2][3] The metrics rates on Observability took effect 2026-07-01.[2]
Catalog SKUs: Elasticsearch Serverless Ingest VCU, Elasticsearch Serverless Search VCU, Elastic Observability Serverless Logs Essentials ingest, Elastic Observability Serverless Complete ingest, Elastic Security Serverless Security Analytics Essentials ingest, Elastic Security Serverless Security Analytics Complete ingest.
Metrics
| Elastic name | Catalog row | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Virtual Compute Unit (VCU): Ingest, Search, Machine Learning | Virtual Compute Unit (VCU) | Elasticsearch Serverless |
| GB ingested | GB ingested (Elastic Cloud Serverless) | Observability and Security Serverless |
| GB retained per month | GB retained per month (Elastic Cloud Serverless) | All Serverless projects |
Elasticsearch Serverless “charges separately for compute (VCUs with 1GB RAM) and storage (GB)”. Ingest VCUs handle indexing into the Search AI Lake; Search VCUs handle searches, alerting rules, aggregations, transforms and geospatial queries; Machine Learning VCUs handle inference, ELSER and ML jobs.[1] Other dimensions are tokens for the Elastic Managed LLM and Elastic Inference Service, Workflow executions, Agent Builder executions, cross-project search and data out.[4][5]
Counting / floors
Metered volume (2024-12-01). “Ingest and retention metering is based on the uncompressed, normalized, fully enriched data volume that you ingest into your serverless project.” Elastic warns that metered volumes will be much higher than the raw or compressed size on the wire.[1] Estimates built from compressed log volumes will therefore understate cost. Catalog: Serverless ingest and retention metered on uncompressed, normalized, fully enriched volume.
Search baseline (as of 2026-09-30). Ingest VCU billing scales to zero with no ingest activity. Search VCUs are not charged per request, and “Unlike ingest, Search VCU billing does not scale to zero during idle periods”: a baseline, set mainly by the Search Power setting and the search-ready dataset size, is always provisioned and billed at a reduced rate when idle.[4] Catalog: Search VCUs do not scale to zero; idle baseline billed at a reduced rate.
Agent Builder and Workflows (2026-05-01). Agent Builder bills per execution, one conversational turn with a non-error response; turns above 50,000 input tokens count as additional executions, so a 120,000-token turn counts as 3. Workflows bill per successful end-to-end run. Elasticsearch Serverless includes 1,000 free Agent Builder executions and 10,000 free workflow executions per month.[4] On Security projects both are billing dimensions of the Security Analytics Complete tier, each with 10,000 free executions a month.[7] Catalog: Agent Builder: turns above 50,000 input tokens count as additional executions.
Cross-project search (2026-09-16). Charges are billed to the origin project on the data retained in linked projects and on data transferred by queries. Billing began on 2026-09-16.[5]
Virtualization & partitioning
Not applicable. Elastic manages all hardware configuration in Serverless, and no customer host or core is counted.[6]
Cloud / BYOL
Serverless runs on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure in the regions Elastic lists.[6] There is no bring-your-own-licence path: usage is billed by Elastic, or through a cloud marketplace subscription, as described in Elastic licensing.
Security endpoints (2026-03-23). “As of March 23, 2026, per-endpoint fees no longer apply. Ingest and retention charges still apply.” Endpoint Protection is listed as included; Cloud Protection (CSPM, cloud workload protection) remains an add-on per billable asset per month.[3] Catalog: Elastic Security Serverless: per-endpoint fees removed from 2026-03-23.
Observability add-ons (2026-07-01). Synthetic monitoring, the Elastic Managed LLM, cross-project search, Workflows and Agent Builder are each marked “Available only with Observability Complete projects”.[2] Catalog: Observability Serverless add-ons available only with Observability Complete projects.
Programs
Support as a share of consumption (as of 2026-09-30). With a Standard subscription there is no separate support charge. For Gold, Platinum or Enterprise “a charge is made for Support as a percentage (%) of the ECUs”.[5] The pricing pages give the rates:[1]
| Subscription level | Support level | Share of charge |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | Limited | Included |
| Gold | Base | 5% |
| Platinum | Enhanced | 10% |
| Enterprise | Premium | 15% |
Catalog: Elastic Cloud support charged as a percentage of consumption (Gold 5%, Platinum 10%, Enterprise 15%). Platinum and Enterprise also carry a 99.95% monthly uptime SLA on Serverless (Elastic Cloud: 99.95% monthly uptime SLA only for Platinum and Enterprise).[6] The monthly, consumption and annual commercial programs are described in Elastic licensing.
Out of scope
- Per-region rates in the Elastic Cloud pricing table.
- Elasticsearch Vector Database projects and per-model Elastic Inference Service rates.
- Cloud Protection asset counting (CSPM, KSPM, CNVM) beyond the headline rates.
- Elastic Cloud Hosted, covered in Elastic Cloud Hosted subscription levels.