Grafana Loki is the default pick for teams that already run Grafana and Prometheus, with a 50 GB free allowance, a $19 monthly platform fee, and no license fee for self-hosted Loki. Loki indexes labels only, not the full text of each log line, which keeps storage costs low and changes how full-text search works compared with Elasticsearch-based tools. Datadog and Splunk tie logs to metrics, traces, and security workflows in one service, but both charge on more than one meter, so the bill grows with ingest, indexing, and retention together.
In this context, Loki means Grafana Loki, the log aggregation system from Grafana Labs that stores logs with Prometheus-style labels and pairs with Grafana dashboards. Loki indexes labels only, not the full text of each log line, which keeps storage costs low and changes how full-text search works compared with Elasticsearch-based tools. Pick a replacement by matching three things: how much you ingest per day, how long you need logs searchable, and whether you also need metrics, traces, or SIEM in the same service.
On this page
Loki alternatives: comparison table
Swipe the table sideways on a phone to see every column.
| # | Name | Best for | Starting price | Free plan / trial | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Grafana Loki | Grafana and Prometheus teams with high log volume | $19 per month platform fee | Yes | Visit |
| 2 | Datadog | Teams that want logs, metrics, and traces in one place | $0.10 per GB ingested per month | Free trial | Visit |
| 3 | Splunk | Large enterprises with heavy compliance and security log needs | quote only | Free trial | Visit |
| 4 | Elastic Cloud | Teams that need full-text search across logs | $0.14 per VCU per hour for ingest | Free trial | Visit |
| 5 | Graylog | Teams that want a self-hosted open core log manager | quote only | Yes | Visit |
| 6 | Sumo Logic | Cloud-native teams that want log analytics plus SIEM in one service | quote only | Yes | Visit |
| 7 | Logz.io | Teams that want managed ELK with consumption billing | $0.10 per GB per day for ingest | Free trial (14 days) | Visit |
| 8 | SigNoz | OpenTelemetry teams that want usage billing with no host or seat fees | $49 per month | Yes | Visit |
The 8 best loki alternatives, in detail
Grafana Loki
Best for: Grafana and Prometheus teams with high log volume
Grafana Loki is the named product in this list, and it stays the default pick for teams that already run Grafana and Prometheus. The open source edition carries no license fee, and the hosted Grafana Cloud Logs free tier includes 50 GB ingested per month with 14-day retention. The Pro tier adds a $19 monthly platform fee, then charges $0.05 per GB processed, $0.40 per GB written, and $0.10 per GB retained, with 30-day retention.
- One limit: you search by labels and then filter within matching streams, rather than running a full-text index over every word.
- That keeps costs down at high volume.
Pros
- Free tier includes 50 GB ingested per month with 14-day retention
- label-only indexing keeps storage costs low
- pairs with Grafana dashboards, metrics, and traces
Cons
- Label-only indexing limits full-text search compared with Elasticsearch
- self-hosted Loki needs your team to operate the cluster
- Enterprise needs a $25,000 annual minimum commit
Datadog
Best for: Teams that want logs, metrics, and traces in one place
Datadog Log Management charges on two meters, and that split is the detail most buyers miss. Every log costs $0.10 per GB to ingest, billed annually, and only indexed logs become searchable. Standard indexing costs $1.70 per million log events per month for 15-day retention, or $2.55 on demand, and the rate rises to $2.50 per million events for 30-day retention.
- The trade-off: you get more than 1,000 integrations, log-based metrics, live tail, and archives to AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storag
Pros
- Log ingest, indexing, and archives sit beside APM, infrastructure, and RUM in one service
- parsing for 200-plus log sources is built in
- Flex Storage keeps logs up to 15 months
Cons
- Indexing is a second charge on top of ingest at $1.70 per million events for 15-day retention
- on-demand indexing costs $2.55 per million events
- 30-day retention raises indexing to $2.50 per million events
Splunk
Best for: Large enterprises with heavy compliance and security log needs
Splunk Cloud Platform is the managed SaaS version of the Splunk platform, and Splunk Enterprise is the self-managed version for private cloud or on-premises use. Both offer ingest or workload pricing with unlimited users, and the cloud version also offers activity-based pricing. The one listed price on the Splunk pricing page belongs to Splunk Observability Cloud, which starts at $15 per host per month billed annually for the Infrastructure tier, $60 for App and Infra, and $75 for End-to-End.
- Splunk Cloud Platform supports activity-based, ingest, or workload pricing with unlimited users
- Splunk Observability Cloud starts at $15 per host per month
- search language SPL is widely known
Pros
- Splunk Cloud Platform supports activity-based, ingest, or workload pricing with unlimited users
- Splunk Observability Cloud starts at $15 per host per month
- search language SPL is widely known
Cons
- Splunk does not list a price for Splunk Cloud Platform or Splunk Enterprise, so budgeting needs a sales quote
- Enterprise Security is a separate product on top of the platform
- entry Observability tier includes Log Observer Connect only, with APM held for higher tiers
Elastic Cloud
Best for: Teams that need full-text search across logs
Elastic Cloud is the hosted home of Elasticsearch, and it is the natural pick when full-text search is the main job. Elasticsearch Serverless lists ingest from $0.14 per virtual compute unit per hour, search from $0.09 per VCU per hour, and storage and retention from $0.047 per GB retained per month. A small development setup with 2 GB of searchable data costs about $24 per month on demand, while a production setup with 20 GB costs about $190 per month.
- The trade-off: serverless billing splits into compute and storage, and Elastic notes that ingest and retention metering uses the uncompressed, normali
- Support is also tiered by percentage of the bill.
Pros
- Full-text search across logs with Elasticsearch
- serverless bills ingest, search, and storage as separate meters
- storage and retention from $0.047 per GB retained per month
Cons
- Ingest, search, and storage are separate meters, so three lines move at once
- rates are listed as "as low as" and vary by region and profile
- idle search resources still bill at a reduced rate
Graylog
Best for: Teams that want a self-hosted open core log manager
Graylog is an open core log management platform with a free self-hosted edition and commercial Enterprise and Security tiers. Graylog Open is free permanently, is not a trial, and carries no daily ingest cap and no volume limit. Commercial licenses are annual subscriptions with two models: daily volume starting at 10 GB per day, and annual consumption starting at 100 Graylog Consumption Units, where one unit covers 25 GB of Enterprise data or 20 GB of Security data.
- One limit: the entry block matters.
- A team that ingests 3 GB per day still buys the 10 GB per day entry point on the daily volume model.
- Choose Graylog when you want to self-host a capable log manager for free.
Pros
- Graylog Open is free permanently with no daily ingest cap and no volume limit
- licenses processed data volume, not collected data
- pipeline rules can trim fields before processing so they do not count toward the license
Cons
- Commercial licenses start at 10 GB per day or 100 Graylog Consumption Units, so small volumes still buy the entry block
- SIEM features sit in the separate Security tier
- Graylog Open has a narrower feature set than the commercial tiers
Sumo Logic
Best for: Cloud-native teams that want log analytics plus SIEM in one service
Sumo Logic is a cloud-native log analytics and SIEM platform with unlimited users on every package. Its pricing page lists two main packages, an entry tier for small to medium DevOps and SecOps teams and an Enterprise Suite for security teams. Metrics capacity is up to 50,000 per day on the entry tier and unlimited on Enterprise Suite, and tracing capacity is up to 5 GB per day on the entry tier and unlimited on Enterprise Suite.
- The trade-off: Sumo Logic prices by credits and quotes data volume at subscription time.
- Flex licensing changes the model to $0 ingest with search billed separately, which suits teams that collect far more than they query.
Pros
- Unlimited users on every package
- Flex licensing offers $0 ingest with search billed separately
- log retention up to 365 days on the entry package
Cons
- Pricing is credit-based and quoted with data volume at subscription time, so no list price appears on the pricing page
- SIEM ingest is a separate product variable
- entry package caps real-time alerting at 300 log monitors and 500 metric monitors
Logz.io
Best for: Teams that want managed ELK with consumption billing
Logz.io runs the open source ELK stack as a managed cloud service. Its consumption-based plan charges by data volume and unique metrics consumed, with a default hard cap of 300 GB for logs. The official docs give the unit rates: Open 360 logging ingestion at $0.10 per GB per day, index with 7 days of hot retention at $0.82 per GB per day, and cold tier retention at $0.001 per GB per day.
- One limit: the monthly plan costs 1.2 times the annual rate, and any data above the subscription is charged at 1.4 times the subscription rate.
- Logz.io notes that customers remove 32 percent of data and costs on average with its Data Optimisation Hub.
Pros
- Managed ELK stack with log management, metrics, traces, and Cloud SIEM
- consumption plan lets you set a budget and hard ingestion caps
- cold tier storage costs $0.001 per GB per day
Cons
- Monthly billing costs 1.2 times the annual rate
- overage is charged at 1.4 times the subscription rate
- listed prices are for the aws-us-east region and vary elsewhere
SigNoz
Best for: OpenTelemetry teams that want usage billing with no host or seat fees
SigNoz is an open source observability platform built on OpenTelemetry, covering logs, metrics, traces, and exceptions in one service backed by ClickHouse. SigNoz Cloud Teams starts at $49 per month including $49 of usage, about 163 GB of logs or traces. After the included usage, logs and traces cost $0.30 per GB and metrics cost $0.10 per million samples.
- The trade-off: the flat $0.30 per GB log rate is easy to model, but it is a single rate with no cheaper long-retention tier.
- Enterprise plans start at $4,000 per month and add dedicated cloud, bring-your-own-cloud, or self-hosted options with volume discounts and annual cont
Pros
- Teams plan starts at $49 per month including $49 of usage, with logs at $0.30 per GB
- no per-seat or per-host charges
- self-hosted community edition is free under an MIT license
Cons
- The $49 monthly minimum applies even at low volume
- Enterprise starts at $4,000 per month
- heavy volume bills on top of the included $49 of usage
How we chose
We picked tools that replace Grafana Loki for log aggregation: each one collects logs from applications and infrastructure, stores them for search, and supports alerting or dashboards. We included Loki itself because it is the named product and still a real option, plus seven real alternatives with listed pricing or a clear quote-only model. Prices and plan limits in this article come from official vendor pricing pages and official docs opened on 2026-11-12. We did not test any tool hands-on. Where a vendor hid the price, we wrote quote only instead of guessing a number.
Which Loki alternative fits your volume and budget
| Daily log volume | Best fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Under 50 GB per month | Grafana Loki free tier or SigNoz self-hosted | Loki Cloud includes 50 GB ingested per month free, and SigNoz community edition carries no license fee |
| 50 to 500 GB per month | SigNoz Cloud Teams or Grafana Loki Pro | SigNoz starts at $49 per month including $49 of usage, and Loki Pro starts with a $19 platform fee plus $0.40 per GB written |
| 500 GB to 5 TB per month | Grafana Loki Pro or Logz.io consumption | Loki charges $0.05 per GB processed plus $0.40 per GB written, and Logz.io charges $0.10 per GB per day for ingest plus $0.82 per GB per day for index |
| Over 5 TB per month, with SIEM | Splunk, Sumo Logic, or Graylog Security | All three are quote only, so compare them on the entry block and retention terms, not on a list price |
| Full-text search is the main job | Elastic Cloud | Elasticsearch Serverless lists ingest from $0.14 per VCU per hour and storage from $0.047 per GB retained per month |
Frequently asked questions
What is Loki in this comparison?
Loki means Grafana Loki, a log aggregation system from Grafana Labs that stores logs with Prometheus-style labels and pairs with Grafana dashboards. It indexes labels only, not the full text of each log line, which keeps storage costs low and changes how full-text search works compared with Elasticsearch-based tools.
Which Loki alternative is cheapest for a small team?
SigNoz Cloud Teams at $49 per month including $49 of usage is the cheapest list-priced hosted option here, with logs at $0.30 per GB after that. Grafana Loki Cloud is cheaper still at low volume, because its free tier includes 50 GB ingested per month with 14-day retention before the $19 monthly platform fee applies.
Which Loki alternative is best for full-text search?
Elastic Cloud is the best pick when full-text search is the main job, because it runs Elasticsearch as a managed service. Its serverless rates start at $0.14 per VCU per hour for ingest and $0.047 per GB retained per month for storage, with search billed as a separate meter from $0.09 per VCU per hour.
Why does Datadog log pricing have two charges?
Datadog separates ingest from indexing. Ingest costs $0.10 per GB per month and covers collection, processing, and archiving, while standard indexing costs $1.70 per million events per month for 15-day retention and makes logs searchable and alertable. Logs that are ingested but not indexed can still feed metrics and archives.
Is there a free Loki alternative?
Yes. Grafana Loki itself is free to self-host with no license fee, and Grafana Cloud Logs includes 50 GB ingested per month free. Graylog Open is free permanently with no ingest cap, and SigNoz offers a free self-hosted community edition under an MIT license.
Which Loki alternative should a large enterprise choose?
Splunk suits large enterprises with heavy compliance and security log needs, because Splunk Cloud Platform offers activity-based, ingest, or workload pricing with unlimited users and scales to petabytes. Its platform price is quote only, so get a quote based on daily volume, and compare it with Sumo Logic and Graylog Security before signing.
Sources
- https://grafana.com/
- https://grafana.com/pricing/
- https://www.datadoghq.com/
- https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/
- https://www.splunk.com/
- https://www.splunk.com/en_us/products/pricing.html
- https://www.elastic.co/
- https://www.elastic.co/pricing/serverless-search
- https://graylog.org/
- https://graylog.org/pricing/
- https://www.sumologic.com/
- https://www.sumologic.com/pricing
- https://logz.io/
- https://logz.io/pricing/
- https://signoz.io/
- https://signoz.io/pricing/
Prices and features were read on each company’s own website in November 2026. They change often, so confirm the current offer on the official site before you sign up or buy.