What is Datadog?
Datadog is a cloud observability and security platform that brings infrastructure metrics, application traces, logs, real user monitoring and incident response into one place. It is made by Datadog and works across cloud providers, containers, serverless functions and on-premises systems. The problem it solves is fragmented monitoring: teams can follow a slow request from the browser through the application, database and infrastructure without switching between separate tools.
Key features
- Infrastructure monitoring. Hosts, containers, Kubernetes, serverless functions and cloud services report metrics, dashboards and alerts.
- Application performance monitoring. Distributed traces and service maps show latency, errors and dependencies across services.
- Log management. Logs can be ingested, processed, searched, archived and routed to different retention tiers.
- Digital experience. Real user monitoring, session replay, synthetic monitoring and mobile app testing cover the client side.
- Security. Cloud security, code security, sensitive data scanning and cloud SIEM share the same telemetry.
- Incident response. On-call schedules, incident timelines and workflow automation connect alerts to response.
- AI assistance. Bits AI can investigate alerts, answer questions about telemetry and help generate code and tests.
Who is Datadog for?
Platform, SRE, DevOps and security teams running production systems in the cloud. It suits companies that need one observability platform across many services and clouds, teams adopting OpenTelemetry, and organisations that want security and incident response next to monitoring. Smaller teams may find the usage-based pricing complex and prefer a narrower tool.
Use cases
- Finding the root cause of a slow or failing API request.
- Monitoring Kubernetes clusters and cloud resources in one dashboard.
- Correlating logs with traces during an incident.
- Tracking front-end performance and user sessions.
- Detecting cloud misconfigurations and security threats.
Pricing
Datadog is usage-based and offers a free trial. Infrastructure Pro starts at $15 per host per month billed annually, or $18 on-demand, and Infrastructure Enterprise starts at $23 per host per month, or $27 on-demand. APM starts at $31 per host per month, log ingestion starts at $0.10 per GB, and log indexing starts at $1.70 per million events for 15-day retention. AI Credits start at $500 per 500 credits per month, with on-demand billing at $1.30 per credit. Prices vary by product, commitment and region. See the official Datadog pricing page.
Getting started
- Start a free trial and create a Datadog organization.
- Install the Datadog Agent on a host, container or cloud service.
- Add the API key and choose the products you want to enable.
- Open the infrastructure map or a service dashboard and create your first monitor.
Alternatives
- Grafana Cloud combines metrics, logs, traces and dashboards with open source tooling.
- Better Stack provides uptime monitoring, logs and incident management.
- Sentry focuses on application error tracking and performance.
- Axiom is a log and event analytics platform for high-volume telemetry.
FAQ
Is Datadog free?
Datadog offers a free trial, but its products are usage-based after that. Infrastructure Pro starts at $15 per host per month billed annually, and other products are priced separately.
What is Datadog used for?
Datadog is used to monitor infrastructure, applications, logs, user experience and security in one platform. It also provides incident response and AI-assisted investigation.
Datadog vs Grafana?
Datadog is a fully managed observability platform with tightly integrated products and billing by usage. Grafana is built around open source dashboards and can query many data sources, with Grafana Cloud as the managed option. The choice depends on how much integration you want versus control over data sources.
Does Datadog support OpenTelemetry?
Yes. Datadog supports OpenTelemetry for collecting and sending telemetry, alongside its own agents and integrations.
How does Datadog pricing work?
Each product is metered separately, such as per host, per GB of logs or per million events. Commitments and annual billing reduce the on-demand rates.
