Datadog vs Axiom for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Datadog Overview

Datadog is the enterprise standard for observability. Infrastructure metrics, APM, log management, synthetic testing, security monitoring, database monitoring. It does everything. The dashboards are beautiful, the integrations are endless, and the APM traces give you exact breakdowns of where time is spent in your requests.

But here's the honest truth for solo developers. Datadog is expensive and complex for what you need. The per-host, per-feature pricing model means costs escalate quickly. I configured it once for a side project and felt like I was setting up mission control at NASA. Every feature you turn on is another line item on your bill. The free tier gives you 5 hosts with 1-day log retention, which barely qualifies as useful.

If you work at a company that pays for Datadog, it's great. If you're paying out of your own pocket for a solo project, it's hard to justify.

Axiom Overview

Axiom takes a fundamentally different approach to observability. It's built around the idea that you should be able to store all your event data cheaply and query it when you need it. No sampling, no retention limits that force you to delete data, no per-host pricing. You ingest your logs, metrics, and traces into datasets and query them with APL (Axiom Processing Language).

The free tier is surprisingly generous. 500 GB of ingest per month with 30 days of retention. That's not a typo. For context, Datadog's free tier gives you 1 day of log retention. Axiom gives you 30 days and an amount of data that would cost hundreds on Datadog.

I started using Axiom after getting frustrated with Datadog's pricing on a personal project. The query language takes a little getting used to if you're not familiar with KQL-style syntax, but once you learn it, searching through logs is fast and flexible.

Key Differences

Pricing philosophy. This is the biggest difference. Datadog charges per host and per feature. Axiom charges per data volume with generous free tiers. For a solo developer shipping logs from one or two services, Axiom is dramatically cheaper. We're talking free vs potentially $50-200/month cheaper.

Scope of features. Datadog is a full observability platform with infrastructure monitoring, APM, dashboards, synthetic tests, and more. Axiom is focused on log and event data analytics. If you need host-level CPU and memory metrics with automatic dashboards, Datadog does that out of the box. Axiom expects you to send that data yourself or pair it with something else.

Data retention. Axiom's approach of "store everything, query later" means you keep your data longer by default. Datadog's retention is tied to your plan, and longer retention costs more. For debugging issues that happened last week, Axiom's 30-day retention on the free tier is a real advantage.

Query experience. Datadog's log explorer has faceted search, saved views, and automatic pattern detection. It's polished. Axiom uses APL, which is powerful but has a steeper learning curve for ad-hoc queries. If you've used Kusto (KQL) before, you'll feel right at home with Axiom. If not, expect a few hours of reading docs.

Integrations. Datadog has hundreds of pre-built integrations with automatic dashboards. Connect your AWS account and dashboards appear. Axiom has integrations too, but fewer, and they're more focused on data ingestion. You'll build your own dashboards.

Alerting. Datadog's alerting is sophisticated with anomaly detection, forecasting, and composite monitors. Axiom offers alerting through monitors and notifiers, which covers the basics well but doesn't match Datadog's depth.

When to Choose Datadog

• You're managing complex infrastructure with multiple services and hosts
• You need pre-built dashboards and integrations that work out of the box
• APM with distributed tracing across microservices is a requirement
• You have budget for enterprise tooling and want everything in one platform
• You need advanced alerting with anomaly detection and forecasting

When to Choose Axiom

• You want generous free-tier log management without per-host pricing
• Data retention matters and you don't want to pay extra to keep logs longer than a day
• You're cost-conscious and can't justify Datadog's pricing for a solo project
• You're comfortable with a query language and don't need pre-built dashboards
• You want to store all your event data without sampling or aggressive retention policies

The Verdict

For solo developers, Axiom is the smarter pick. The free tier alone gives you more useful log management than Datadog's free tier. 500 GB of ingest with 30 days retention means you can actually debug issues from last week without paying anything.

Datadog is the better product if money is no object. It has more features, more polish, and more integrations. But for a solo developer watching their budget, the cost difference is hard to ignore. What you'd spend on Datadog in a month could fund six months of Axiom's pro plan.

My setup as a solo developer is to pair Axiom for logs with a simpler uptime monitoring tool. That combination covers most of what I need without the complexity or cost of a full Datadog deployment. If your project grows to the point where you need distributed tracing and infrastructure-wide dashboards, revisit Datadog then. Until then, Axiom handles the log management side extremely well.