# Datadog Logs vs Grafana Loki

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Grafana Loki

| Attribute | Datadog Logs | Grafana Loki |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 67.9 (46% (low)) | 72.9 (47% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | - | 100 |
| adoption.github_stars | - | 28,652 |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Datadog Logs is a centralized log management and analytics platform that collects, stores, and searches logs across infrastructure and applications. Supports both cloud and self-hosted deployments through CloudPrem. | Grafana Loki is a horizontally scalable, highly available log aggregation system designed to be cost-effective and easy to operate. It indexes only labels rather than full log contents, enabling efficient storage and query performance at petabyte scale. |
| features.capabilities | `{"hosting":"both","alerting":true,"log_role":"platform","dashboards":true,"otel_support":"ingest","pii_redaction":true,"full_text_search":true,"structured_parsing":true}` | `{"hosting":"both","alerting":true,"log_role":"backend","live_tail":true,"dashboards":true,"query_language":"LogQL","full_text_search":false,"retention_tiering":true,"structured_parsing":true,"object_store_backed":true}` |
| integrations.count | 1,000 | 100 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"OpenTelemetry"}]` | `[{"name":"Linux"},{"name":"Windows"},{"name":"Docker"},{"name":"Kubernetes"},{"name":"PostgreSQL"},{"name":"MySQL"},{"name":"MongoDB"},{"name":"Elasticsearch"},{"name":"Redis"},{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"Apache Spark"},{"name":"Apache Cassandra"},{"name":"Jenkins"},{"name":"GitLab"},{"name":"GitHub"},{"name":"Jira"},{"name":"Salesforce"},{"name":"Splunk"},{"name":"Datadog"},{"name":"New Relic"},{"name":"Dynatrace"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"Grafana Agent"},{"name":"Grafana Alloy"},{"name":"Grafana Loki"},{"name":"Grafana Mimir"},{"name":"OpenSearch"},{"name":"InfluxDB"},{"name":"Prometheus"},{"name":"AWS"},{"name":"Azure"},{"name":"Google Cloud"},{"name":"Cloudflare"},{"name":"NGINX"},{"name":"Apache HTTP Server"},{"name":"HAProxy"},{"name":"Traefik"},{"name":"Node.js"},{"name":"Java JVM"},{"name":"Spring Boot"},{"name":"Oracle Database"},{"name":"SQL Server"},{"name":"CockroachDB"},{"name":"Snowflake"},{"name":"Databricks"},{"name":"PagerDuty"},{"name":"Honeycomb"},{"name":"Sumo Logic"},{"name":"HashiCorp Vault"},{"name":"Istio"}]` |
| language.primary | - | Go |
| license.spdx | - | AGPL-3.0 |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | - | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Free","summary":"Always free, no credit card required","features":["All Grafana Cloud services with limited usage","Community support","14 days retention for metrics, logs, traces, profiles, & k6 performance tests"],"components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":0,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Perfect for personal projects, exploring new ideas, and early-stage startups","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"retention":"14 days","logs_ingested":"50 GB/mo","metrics_series":"10k active series"}},{"free":false,"name":"Pro","summary":"From $19/month + usage with volume discounts","features":["Pay as you go above the Free tier","8X5 email support","13 months retention for metrics","30 days retention for logs, traces, profiles, & k6 performance tests","Automatic volume discounts"],"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":19,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.05,"currency":"USD","description":"Process rate (logs)"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.4,"currency":"USD","description":"Write rate (logs)"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.1,"currency":"USD","description":"Retain rate (logs)"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"1k series"},"kind":"metered","amount":6.5,"currency":"USD","description":"Metrics (overage)"}],"description":"Ready for scaling with more retention, basic support, and usage-based pricing","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"retention":"30 days","logs_ingested":"50 GB/mo included","metrics_series":"10k active series included"}},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","summary":"From $25,000/year minimum commit with custom pricing","features":["Premium support","Custom retention","Deployment flexibility (Public Cloud, Federal Cloud, Bring Your Own Cloud)","Scalable pricing based on annual commit and volume discounts"],"commitment":"annual","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"1k series"},"kind":"metered","amount":3,"currency":"USD","description":"Metrics (as low as with volume discount)"}],"description":"Full-service offering for companies with security, compliance, and deployment requirements","contactSales":true,"includedLimits":{"minimum_annual_spend":"$25,000"}}],"summary":"Free tier available. Pro from $19/month + metered usage with volume discounts. Enterprise from $25,000/year.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://grafana.com/oss/loki/","retrievedAt":"2026-08-05T13:24:26.849Z","startingPrice":{"amount":0.05,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month","year"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | - | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | - | low |
| pricing.starting_gbp | - | 0.05 |
| pricing.transparent | - | yes |
| release.cadence_days | - | 14 |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | yes |
| security.fedramp | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | yes | yes |
| security.iso27001 | yes | yes |
| security.pci | - | yes |
| security.soc2 | yes | yes |

## Capabilities (Log Management Software)

| Capability | Datadog Logs | Grafana Loki |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Core** |  |  |
| Pipeline role | End-to-end platform | Backend |
| **Search** |  |  |
| Full-text log search | ✓ | ✗ |
| Live tail / stream | - | ✓ |
| **Processing** |  |  |
| Structured parsing | ✓ | ✓ |
| PII redaction at ingest | ✓ | - |
| **Ops** |  |  |
| Log-based alerting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dashboards / visualisation | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Storage** |  |  |
| Retention tiering | - | ✓ |
| Object-store columnar backend | - | ✓ |
| **Interop** |  |  |
| OpenTelemetry logs | OTLP ingest | - |
| Query language | - | LogQL |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud + self-hosted | Cloud + self-hosted |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-08-07T00:02:17.143Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*