Datadog
Cloud observability — metrics, traces and logs — with no servers to run.
Paid (trial) Cloud / SaaS
- Platforms
- SaaS (web + mobile); agent for Windows/Linux/macOS
- Licence
- Paid (trial) — proprietary SaaS
- Price
- Free up to 5 hosts; Infrastructure from $15/host/mo
- Category
- Monitoring & observability
- Updated
- 2026-11-05
What it is
Datadog is a cloud observability platform spanning metrics, traces (APM), logs and alerting in one web UI, with hundreds of integrations. It watches hybrid infrastructure without you standing up any monitoring servers of your own.
Problems it removes
- You would rather not run and scale your own monitoring stack.
- You need metrics, traces and logs correlated in one place.
How administrators use it
- Install the agent on hosts and switch on integrations for your services.
- Build dashboards and monitors, and tie APM traces to logs during incidents.
Strengths & trade-offs
Strengths
- Nothing to self-host.
- Metrics, APM and logs together.
- Hundreds of integrations.
Trade-offs
- Usage-based billing can grow quickly.
- Data leaves your premises for the vendor cloud.
Common questions
Is Datadog self-hosted?
No — it is a SaaS platform. You install an agent and data goes to Datadog’s cloud.
How is Datadog billed?
Usage-based (per host, plus APM, logs and more), with a free tier up to 5 hosts.