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Datadog vs Grafana Loki comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog's customer service is generally praised for responsiveness and expertise, though some users note delays and lack of phone support.
Sentiment score
7.9
Grafana Loki's support combines community aid and resources with varying user satisfaction, requiring effort for integration and documentation navigation.
We have not had to open any tickets yet, as we solve issues through forums and wikis.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
5.6
Datadog users face challenges with billing, integration, interface complexity, and desire more flexibility, support, and improved features.
Sentiment score
8.0
Grafana Loki needs better flow visibility, request correlation, stability, Docker integration, and enhanced scalability, security, and reporting features.
It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Datadog offers scalable performance and customization but users should monitor rising costs and potential challenges with complex architectures.
Sentiment score
8.5
Grafana Loki is praised for its scalability, reliable operations, and ability to handle large systems and data efficiently.
Loki offers great scalability, allowing us to manage and compress logs extensively.
 

Setup Cost

Sentiment score
6.3
Datadog's pricing varies by organization size, requiring careful monitoring and planning due to complex usage-based billing and potential hidden costs.
No sentiment score available
Grafana Loki provides cost-effective pricing options with a popular free open-source version and a competitively priced cloud version.
The cloud version is competitively priced compared to other market solutions.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog is praised for its stability and reliable performance, effectively managing disruptions and supporting diverse operational needs.
Sentiment score
8.1
Grafana Loki is generally stable, but some users encounter issues with log retrieval and outdated methods affecting stability.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.4
Datadog excels in real-time monitoring, intuitive interface, robust integrations, efficient alerts, and comprehensive performance tracking and system reliability.
No sentiment score available
Grafana Loki offers easy deployment, cost-effectiveness, and robust log monitoring with seamless Grafana integration and Kubernetes compatibility.
The most valuable part of Loki is the ability to filter logs by keywords and devices.
 

Categories and Ranking

Datadog
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
187
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Network Monitoring Software (2nd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
7th
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 November 2024, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Datadog is 6.1%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 6.4%, up from 1.0% 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.
Arjun Pandey - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective for Logging, recovery from node failures is fast and single UI supports metrics, logs, and even tracing
If it is HelloGuard setup or doing some setup on the dev cluster, it's pretty straightforward. But when we're dealing with a heavy cluster, like 15 to 20 terabytes of data per day, we need a production-grade cluster. For that kind of scenario, we must invest time and understand the process. We could have integrated these features within their health check, but they're using processes like Tanka and Jsonnet to implement a production service. I feel this could have been better. If I use a metric solution for metrics, I'd use Grafana for metrics monitoring. For logging, I'd use a different tool, like ELK. And for tracing another tool. So, to troubleshoot a specific issue, I have to switch between three different consoles. What I see in metrics isn't the same as in logs because the metadata and collection methods differ. That's where Loki comes in. Within Grafana, you can see metrics, logs, correlations, generate metrics from logs, and also set alerts. Alerting from logs is something many companies desire. With Loki, if there's a pattern in the log, we can filter it out without altering the entire pipeline. For instance, if I had to add fields in ELK, it would require a lot of configuration changes. Loki, however, is more flexible. It uses a grep-like pattern and the metadata model from Prometheus. It's highly efficient, with compressed data and block storage like GCS bucket or AWS S3, making log storage cost-effective. Compared to other solutions, it's more economical. Loki also has a Log CLI, which is very effective. It's all on-premises. Like, it's on the cloud, but it's self-managed, not a managed service.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
37%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

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 needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment. The solution is very stable, and further improvements might result in it becoming resource-intensive like other solutions.
 

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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Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.