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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
188
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th)
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Datadog is 6.0%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 8.7%, up from 3.7% 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.
CarlosPimentel - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient log filtering enhances quick network troubleshooting
We use Grafana Loki for various verticals including manufacturing, finance, health, and aerospatial sectors. It primarily helps in monitoring security and access to devices. Grafana dashboards are used to track access success and failure and audit commands issued on devices Loki significantly…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It lets us react more quickly to things going wrong. Whereas before, it might have been 30 minutes to an hour before we noticed something going on, we will know within a minute or two if something is off, which will let us essentially get something back up and running faster for our customers, which is revenue."
"It provides more cloud data. They tend to just get the way a service would be designed on the cloud."
"It is easy to navigate the menu and create tests."
"We've been able to glean from the monitors what servers are down, and can alert the team in Slack."
"Dashboards and their versatility are among the most valuable features."
"It has empowered all our platform engineers with a very powerful and easy to use monitoring system."
"The ease of use allowed me to get up to speed with log management since it's my first time using Datadog."
"Excellent autocomplete for everything in the UI."
"I appreciate the capability to process logs from microservices and seamlessly integrate them into Grafana."
"The best feature of Grafana Loki is that it integrates well with our other tool."
"The effectiveness of filters is pivotal for optimizing the search process and extracting the specific information we need from the extensive log data."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that it is an open-source tool that is stable and flexible."
"The solution's stability has never been a problem. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Grafana Loki is the dashboards which are really simple to create."
"Grafana Loki is easy to monitor and detect errors."
"There are new features like that pilot code and things like that for profiling."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see an expansion of the Android and IOS apps to have a simplified CI/CD pipeline history view."
"The menu on the left is pretty dense (and I know it has to be). I never knew about the cmd+k functionality until recently. It would be helpful to offer more tips/cheat sheets to see handy shortcuts like that."
"We need a lot of modules since we collect all data logs from all operating systems."
"The dashboard could be improved. It would be helpful to get a view of specific things that we need to monitor for our application."
"There could be more easily identifiable documentation on how to find different things on the platform."
"While the UI and search functionality are excellent, further improvement could be made in the querying of logs by offering more advanced templates or suggestions based on common use cases."
"The ease of implementation needs improvement."
"The setup was a bit complex."
"The Docker container partition feature needs improvement as they do not reuse the space and goes into a pending state."
"Visualization-wise, Grafana Loki's dashboard looks a little outdated compared to other open-source visualization tools like Chronograf."
"In Grafana Loki, the creation of metrics is not so easy, making it an area that could be made easier."
"Enhancing speed could be a game-changer, and while it might vary depending on the application, it's a factor worth exploring."
"It's not intended for proprietary services, so you have to struggle with configuration a lot."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."
"The price is better than some competing products."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"The pricing and licensing through AWS Marketplace has been good. It would be nice if it was cheaper, but their pricing is reasonable for what it is. Sometimes, for their newer features, they charge as if it's fully fleshed out, even though it is a newer feature and it may have less stuff than their other items."
"Pricing is somewhat affordable compared to other solutions but in order to really lower the costs of other products you need to plan very carefully your resources usage, otherwise, it can get expensive real quick."
"At my last company, we did see ROI, specifically around response time. We could get to mission critical things that were down and losing revenue on immediately. So, the product paid itself back."
"We use a free version."
"Grafana Loki is an open-source solution."
"My company doesn't need to pay for the licensing cost of the solution."
"Grafana Loki is a free, open-source solution."
"I find the licensing structure quite reasonable, as the free license effectively meets my requirements."
"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."
"You can use the free version of Grafana Loki on-premises."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
31%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
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?
We use the open-source version of Loki. The cloud version is competitively priced compared to other market solutions.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers.
 

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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