Owlpane / Solutions / Datadog alternative
Moving from another tool · built on OpenTelemetryA Datadog alternative for small teams: one bill, priced by data.
Datadog bills per host, per ingested log GB, per indexed million events and per module. Owlpane bills by data ingested only, so you can forecast it before you sign up. Send a copy of your OpenTelemetry data and compare during a real incident.
Switching, honestly
What you keep, gain and give up
Keep
Your OpenTelemetry instrumentation and your Datadog account while you compare. Nothing proprietary to undo later.
Gain
A bill that depends on one number, GB ingested, with a spend cap that samples instead of surprising you. Traces, logs, metrics and Kubernetes share one ingest key.
Give up
Breadth. Datadog has a far larger integration catalogue plus network and security products we do not offer, and services on the proprietary tracer need OpenTelemetry first.
What you use
Built from features that ship today
Cluster explorer
Nodes, workloads and pods with a jump to their traces, from one Helm install.
Kubernetes →
Alert rules
Checked every minute; one message when it fires and one when it resolves.
Alerting & SLOs →How it works
Three steps
Add an exporter
Add one exporter to your OpenTelemetry Collector and your current tool keeps receiving everything it does today.
Compare on a real incident
Start with one service or ten percent of traffic.
Move what works
Keep Datadog for anything we do not cover.
Side by side
What each one charges for
| Datadog (list price) | Owlpane | |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure | $15 per host per month, billed annually ($18 on demand) | Not billed per host |
| APM | $31 per host per month with Infrastructure, billed annually ($48 on demand) | Not billed per host |
| Logs | $0.10 per ingested GB, plus $1.70 per million indexed events per month for 15-day retention (annual) | Counted in GB ingested, like every other signal |
| What you forecast | Hosts, GB, indexed events and each extra module | One number: GB ingested per month |
| Entry point | Paid, per product | Free up to 10 GB a month; Team is $29 including 50 GB, then $0.35 per GB |
Datadog figures are public list prices we read on datadoghq.com/pricing in September 2026. Custom metrics, RUM, security and other products are extra, so treat any Datadog estimate as a floor. Discounts and commitments change the real number. Datadog pricing · Estimate both with the cost calculator
Questions
Is Owlpane really cheaper than Datadog?
Can I keep my Datadog agent?
Where Owlpane is narrower
- No ~900-integration catalogue, network monitoring suite or security products.
- Smaller ecosystem of community content than Datadog.
Comparisons reflect publicly available information as of September 2026 and our own product today, and may change. Datadog, New Relic, Grafana, Dash0, Better Stack, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS, Sentry, Dynatrace, Kubeshark, Checkly, PagerDuty, SigNoz, Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus and other names are trademarks of their respective owners; Owlpane is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.
Send a copy of your telemetry. Change nothing else.
Standard OpenTelemetry in, so you can try Owlpane beside what you run today.
Every new workspace starts with a 14-day Team trial: 50 GB of ingest a month and 30-day retention. No card to start. Documentation · Pricing · Pricing questions