vs Datadog
TrailStack vs Datadog cost comparison for event analytics.
Honest cost math for teams outgrowing Datadog.
TL;DR
At 100M events per month, TrailStack costs $42.50. Datadog costs $420, 10x more. Datadog charges separately for logs, metrics, and errors. TrailStack has one price.
Check first
TrailStack won't replace Datadog if you depend on any of these:
- On-call alerting — TrailStack stores your data but won't page you at 3 AM
- APM trace waterfall — you can store trace data, but there is no visual trace explorer
- Pre-built dashboards — you query with SQL or AI via MCP, but there are no built-in charts or alert rules
- Auto-instrumentation — TrailStack needs you to send events explicitly via SDK or HTTP POST
The scenario
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Log events per month | 65,000,000 |
| Metric events per month | 30,000,000 |
| Error events per month | 5,000,000 |
| Total | 100,000,000 |
| Average event size | 1 KB weighted |
| Logs | ~1-2 KB |
| Metrics | ~200 B |
| Errors | ~2-5 KB |
| Data volume | 100 GB per month |
| Retention | 30 days |
A 3-5 developer SaaS team. Logs from 3-5 services, custom counters, error events with stack traces. The Datadog bill has crossed $400 per month.
What 100M events per month costs
| Line item | Datadog | TrailStack |
|---|---|---|
| Log ingestion | $0.10/GB × 50 GB = $5 | Free |
| Log indexing | $1.70/M × 50M = $85 | — |
| Custom metrics | $0.05 × 2,000 = $100 | — |
| APM | $31 × 5 hosts = $155 | — |
| Infra monitoring | $15 × 5 hosts = $75 | — |
| Storage | — | $0.025 × 100 GB = $2.50 |
| Compute | — | 2 CU = $40 |
| Total | $420 | $42.50 |
Datadog rates shown are for annual commitment — the lowest published option. On-demand rates are higher.
One endpoint, one price. You can keep Datadog's APM, dashboards, or alerting and move only the data layer. $42.50 instead of $420.
2 CU covers 3-5 people (see How compute works).
What happens at scale
Datadog's cost grows linearly with events and hosts. TrailStack's compute stays flat — only storage increases.
| Scale | TrailStack (2 CU) | Datadog |
|---|---|---|
| 10M per month | $40.25 | $95 |
| 50M per month | $41.25 | $240 |
| 100M per month | $42.50 | $420 |
| 500M per month | $52.50 | $2,100 |
At 10M the gap is 2x. At 100M it's 10x. At 500M it's 40x.
What happens to old data
Datadog keeps data for 15-60 days, then deletes it. You can archive to S3, but rehydration costs $0.10 per GB scanned plus $1.27 per million events re-indexed.
TrailStack keeps all your data in ClickHouse, always queryable, at $0.025 per GB per month. There is no time limit.
| Retention | TrailStack (2 CU) | Datadog |
|---|---|---|
| 1 month | $42.50 | $420 |
| 3 months | $47.50 | $420 + rehydration fees |
| 6 months | $55 | $420 + rehydration fees |
| 12 months | $70 | $420 + rehydration fees |
To compare this March to last March, you run one SQL query on TrailStack. On Datadog, you rehydrate, wait, and pay per scan.
What you get for the money
Datadog at $420 per month gives you logs, custom metrics, APM with trace waterfall, infra monitoring, dashboards, and on-call alerting. Each data type is billed separately. Retention is 15-60 days, then your data is deleted.
TrailStack at $42.50 per month gives you JSON ingestion with automatic schema detection, real-time ClickHouse SQL, and wire protocol access. No dashboards. Bring Grafana, DBeaver, or AI tools. Retention is unlimited at $0.025 per GB.
The pricing model
Datadog scales with events and hosts. TrailStack scales with stored data. Compute is flat.
Caveats & Sources
The 1 KB average is a weighted baseline: metrics at ~200 bytes, logs at 1-2 KB. Datadog charges per event regardless of size, so the advantage holds at any event size.
This comparison assumes 5 hosts, 2,000 custom metrics, and annual commitment pricing. Larger teams pay more on every Datadog line item.
- datadoghq.com/pricing — ingestion, indexing, APM, and infrastructure rates
- docs.datadoghq.com/billing/pricing — per-million-event billing model
Verified against published pricing pages as of April 2026.