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Datadog vs Grafana Loki comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Datadog
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
187
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Datadog is 6.0%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 8.6%, up from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.
Volodymyr Bondarchuk - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrations enhance monitoring but problem-solving proves challenging
Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself. As part of Kubernetes technology, I noticed benefits from using this product such as availability, configuration balancing, high availability solutions for high performance, and failover clustering. It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The full stack of integrations made it easier to monitor the different technologies and platform providers, including Software as a Service providers, that otherwise would need a lot of work and customization to be able to see what is happening."
"Its logs are most valuable."
"Datadog's ability to group and visualize the servers and the data makes it relatively easy for the root cause analysis."
"The visibility into our network has allowed for quick diagnosis of failures, identification of underutilized or over-utilized resources, and allowed for cloud cost optimization opportunities."
"The single pane of glass view with maneuvering between products has helped us to truly understand root causes after incidents."
"The observability pipelines are the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"Datadog has clear dashboards and good documentation."
"The most valuable feature I have found is the elastic container service."
"The most valuable feature is the capability to set up alerts, which becomes necessary when we need to receive notifications for specific events."
"The effectiveness of filters is pivotal for optimizing the search process and extracting the specific information we need from the extensive log data."
"There are new features like that pilot code and things like that for profiling."
"The product's most valuable features are ease of installation, management, and reporting. It has an efficient ability to set thresholds for alerts, as well."
"Loki also utilizes the same service discovery mechanism as used by Prometheus. So, whatever labeled metadata you see in Prometheus, you have the exact same metadata in the Loki system. Given this level of intricacy and the attempt to address these challenges, I firmly believe that Loki deserves praise for the work."
"We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics."
"I appreciate the capability to process logs from microservices and seamlessly integrate them into Grafana."
"The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices."
 

Cons

"The product could be improved by providing remote control to agents, enabling them to execute automation and collections without requiring another automation tool or integration."
"One area where I was really looking for improvement was the CSPM product line. I had really wanted to have team-level visibility for findings, since the team managing the resources has much more context and ability to resolve the issue, as the service owner. However, this has been added to the announcement in a recent keynote."
"We would really like to see more from the Service Catalog."
"The pricing is a bit confusing."
"I love to have some DD guru come in and do a department training directly at our setup."
"Datadog's roadmap can be a bit unpredictable at times."
"In some cases the screenshots don't match the text as updates are made."
"More helpful log search keywords/tips would be helpful in improving Datadog's log dashboard."
"My main concern is the recommended production-grade setup. They suggest using tools like Tanka or Jsonnet. They should simplify the process to increase adoption."
"We face some bugs when we install the latest version of Grafana Loki."
"Visualization-wise, Grafana Loki's dashboard looks a little outdated compared to other open-source visualization tools like Chronograf."
"There is a need for some change in the alerting types of the product. In short, a few changes in the alert area are needed due to minor shortcomings."
"The correlation of requests is not simple in Grafana Loki and can be improved."
"I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment."
"It's not intended for proprietary services, so you have to struggle with configuration a lot."
"The platform's stability needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is budget friendly."
"It costs the same amount it would if we were hosting it ourselves, so we are incredibly happy with the cost."
"It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."
"I am not satisfied with its licensing. Its payment is based on the exported data, and there was an explosion of the data for three or four weeks. My customer was not alerted, and there was no way for them to see that there has been an explosion of data. They got a big invoice for one or two months. The pricing model of Datadog is based on the data. The customer was quite surprised about not being alerted about this explosion of data. They should provide some kind of alert when there is an increase in usage."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."
"It has always scaled for us. Cost scales up too, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's reasonable for what they're providing."
"Grafana Loki is a free, open-source solution."
"The solution is open source."
"My company doesn't need to pay for the licensing cost of the solution."
"Since we are using the open-source version of Grafana Loki, we are not paying anything for the solution."
"I use the open-source version of the product."
"We use a free version."
"I find the licensing structure quite reasonable, as the free license effectively meets my requirements."
"I use the solution's open-source version. Grafana Loki is a completely free solution for me."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
What do you like most about Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana Loki?
Since it is an open source tool, there are no charges or fees.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
I have no ideas at this moment about what could be improved in Grafana Loki.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
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860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.