Datadog vs Grafana for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Datadog Overview

Datadog is the all-in-one observability platform that large companies love. Infrastructure monitoring, APM, logs, synthetic tests, security, database monitoring. Everything under one roof, fully managed, beautifully polished. You connect your infrastructure, and dashboards materialize automatically. The APM traces show exactly where time gets spent across your services.

For solo developers, though, Datadog has two problems. First, it's expensive. Per-host, per-feature pricing means costs stack up in ways you don't expect. Second, it's complex. There are so many features that finding what you need feels like navigating a maze. I remember spending more time configuring Datadog than actually building features. That's the wrong ratio when you're working alone.

Grafana Overview

Grafana is the open-source visualization and monitoring ecosystem that powers a huge chunk of the internet's monitoring infrastructure. At its core, Grafana is a dashboarding tool that connects to data sources like Prometheus, Loki, InfluxDB, PostgreSQL, and dozens more. You build dashboards that visualize whatever data you throw at it.

The ecosystem has grown significantly. Grafana Cloud bundles Grafana with managed Prometheus (metrics), Loki (logs), and Tempo (traces). The free tier includes 10,000 metrics, 50 GB of logs, and 50 GB of traces. That's a legitimate free monitoring stack.

I run a self-hosted Grafana with Prometheus and Loki on my server. Took about an hour to set up with Docker Compose, and now I have full observability for $0/month. The dashboards are as good as Datadog's once you build them. The catch is that "once you build them" part. Datadog auto-generates dashboards. With Grafana, you're building them yourself or importing community templates.

Key Differences

Managed vs self-hostable. Datadog is SaaS only. You send data to Datadog's servers, period. Grafana can be self-hosted for free or used as a managed cloud service. For solo developers who already have a VPS, self-hosting Grafana means zero additional cost.

Pricing model. Datadog's per-host pricing punishes you for scaling. Add a server, add cost. Grafana Cloud's free tier is based on data volume, not host count. Self-hosted Grafana costs nothing beyond the server resources it consumes.

Ecosystem flexibility. Grafana connects to practically any data source. Want to visualize your Postgres query performance alongside your server metrics and application logs? Grafana doesn't care where the data lives. Datadog prefers you send everything into Datadog's own platform.

Setup effort. Datadog is faster to get started. Install an agent, data flows, dashboards appear. Grafana (self-hosted) requires configuring Prometheus for metrics, Loki for logs, and building your own dashboards. Grafana Cloud reduces this effort significantly, but it's still more hands-on than Datadog.

Dashboard quality. Both produce beautiful dashboards. Datadog's pre-built dashboards are immediately useful. Grafana's community templates give you a head start, but you'll spend time customizing them. If you enjoy building dashboards, Grafana is more fun. If you want them done for you, Datadog wins.

Alerting. Datadog has sophisticated alerting with ML-powered anomaly detection. Grafana's alerting has improved a lot and covers the basics well, but it's not as advanced as Datadog's.

When to Choose Datadog

• You want zero setup effort and pre-built dashboards that work immediately
• You need advanced APM with distributed tracing across microservices
• Anomaly detection and ML-powered alerting matter to your use case
• You have budget for managed tooling and prefer not to maintain infrastructure
• You need enterprise compliance features like audit logs and SSO

When to Choose Grafana

• You want to self-host your monitoring stack for free
• You already have a VPS and don't mind running Prometheus/Loki alongside your app
• Budget is a primary concern and you can't justify Datadog's per-host pricing
• You want flexibility to connect any data source, not just one vendor's ecosystem
• Grafana Cloud's free tier covers your needs without self-hosting

The Verdict

For solo developers, Grafana wins. Whether you self-host it or use Grafana Cloud's free tier, you get a powerful monitoring stack without the cost shock of Datadog.

If you already manage your own server, self-hosting Grafana with Prometheus and Loki gives you production-grade monitoring for free. The setup takes an afternoon, and once it's running, you have the same core capabilities that teams pay Datadog hundreds of dollars a month for.

If you don't want to self-host, Grafana Cloud's free tier is generous enough for most solo projects. You get metrics, logs, and traces without maintaining any infrastructure.

Datadog makes sense when you have a team, a budget, and complex distributed systems. For a solo developer building and shipping products, Grafana gives you everything you need at a fraction of the cost. Sometimes free.