SigNozCollect application traces, logs and metrics in one self-hosted workspace.
Free Community software · own server and storage · at least 4 GB Docker memory
Developer tools
Grafana
Free optionBrowser
Monitor metrics, search logs and explore traces with hosted dashboards.
What you can use it for
Monitor metrics, search logs and explore traces with hosted dashboards.
- Lasting hosted free plan suitable for small projects and startups; no credit card required.
- Visual dashboards, telemetry queries and alerting without running a monitoring backend.
Workflow coverage and comparison notes
Replace paid Datadog telemetry dashboards and small-scale metrics/logs/traces monitoring within Grafana Cloud Free limits. Not full Datadog security, managed integrations, retention or every APM feature. Self-hosted Grafana requires data backends such as Prometheus, Loki and Tempo rather than storing all telemetry itself. Additional comparison: Replace small-volume telemetry dashboards and logs/traces with Grafana Cloud Free within its published ingestion and 14-day retention limits. No paid model API needed. Application hosting and telemetry egress are separate. Does not promise Better Stack public status pages, uptime checks or on-call parity. Free open-source operational dashboard and metric visualization engine alternative to Grafana Cloud Pro. Self-hosted Grafana connects to Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, and SQL backends with full alerting, dashboard variables, and user permissions without monthly usage spikes or seat costs.
Before you switch
Account and instrumentation required. Free retention is 14 days and each service has separate limits; higher usage or longer retention needs a paid plan. Your application hosting and telemetry collection/egress can still cost money. No paid LLM API is required for the described monitoring workflow. Self-hosted Grafana OSS is AGPL-3.0 and needs separate telemetry storage, compute, maintenance and backups; a dashboard alone is not a full Datadog replacement.
Alternatives to these paid apps
Each comparison covers the workflow described above, rather than every paid feature.
More for the same workflow
See alternatives →SigNoz
NetdataMonitor server and container health locally with live metrics and alerts.
Free self-hosted Agent for business use · own hardware/storage · Cloud business use is paid
Better StackCheck website uptime, publish a status page and investigate application logs and traces.
Personal projects free · 10 monitors & heartbeats · 1 status page · 3 GB logs + 3 GB traces, 3-day retention