Datadog vs Grafana Loki
Thinking of swapping Datadog for the open-source Grafana Loki? Here’s the honest trade-off.
29k Go AGPL-3.0 2 days ago
What you give up vs Datadog
- Full-text search is not supported; only label-based log filtering
- Requires Grafana for a usable query UI (no standalone dashboard)
- Scalable distributed mode requires object storage (S3/GCS) and careful tuning
What you gain
- • Full data ownership — self-host Grafana Loki on your own infrastructure.
- • No per-seat SaaS bill (Datadog: host- and usage-based bills that spike).
- • Open-source code you can audit and extend (AGPL-3.0).