OpenObserve
Logs, metrics, and traces in one binary - the Datadog/Splunk alternative that stores on your buckets.
One-click deploy, from $7/mo on a Miget plan.
Log management is where observability bills go to spiral: Datadog charges for ingest AND indexing, Splunk lists in the thousands per GB/day, Logz.io meters by the gigabyte. OpenObserve is the open-source reset - one Rust binary doing logs, metrics, and traces, storing columnar Parquet on object storage at a claimed ~10x lower cost than Elasticsearch.
It is the cleanest S3-native fit in the catalogue: point `ZO_LOCAL_MODE_STORAGE=s3` at a Miget Bucket and your telemetry lives there, the container stateless, storage effectively unlimited. OTLP-native ingest means any OpenTelemetry SDK, Vector, or Fluent Bit feeds it directly.
This sits alongside the grafana-stack template: Grafana+Loki for the label-based metrics-and-logs story, OpenObserve for search-grade log analytics with object storage and built-in traces - the part Loki’s model does not cover.
Upstream project: OpenObserve
#what you get
- Logs, metrics, and traces in a single binary - no JVM, no cluster
- Columnar Parquet on object storage (Miget Buckets) - ~10x cheaper than ES
- OTLP-native ingest (HTTP + gRPC); SQL and a query UI
- Dashboards, alerts, and pipelines built in
- Stateless with S3 storage; local-disk mode to start
- AGPL-3.0
#topology
| Service | Role | Public |
|---|---|---|
| openobserve | UI + API + OTLP ingest (:5000 HTTP, :5081 gRPC) | yes |
#miget sizing
// this stack needs
1 GiB RAM · 10 GB disk · 1 service
A Rust binary with no JVM - 1 GiB runs real ingestion. With S3 storage the volume is just a cache; logs live in the bucket.
Hobby - recommended fit
$7/mo
1 vCPU · 1 GiB · 25 GiB disk
Headroom for your own apps: 2 GiB at $13/mo
Professional - production
$22/mo
1 vCPU · 2 GiB · 10 GiB disk
Dedicated resources, production SLOs - plan details
One Miget plan is a fixed pool of compute - the whole stack (managed databases included) deploys inside it, and anything left over runs your other apps. No per-service or per-seat math.
#vs. the managed service
What the hosted equivalents charge, against the flat Miget plan this stack fits on. Prices as of June 2026, sources linked.
| Service | Plan | Monthly | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenObserve on Miget ★ | 1 GiB plan | $7 | this whole stack, flat - no usage meters, and room left for your own apps |
| Datadog Logs | ingest + index | usage-based | ~$0.10/GB ingested AND ~$1.70 per million log events indexed - you pay twice |
| Logz.io | usage | usage-based | ~$0.92-1.03 per GB/day ingested |
| Splunk | ingest | usage-based | list ~$1,800-2,700 per GB/day/year - the genre’s villain |
Log SaaS meters every gigabyte (sometimes twice); columnar-on-S3 self-hosting turns retention from a bill into disk space.
#vs. other PaaS
Estimated monthly cost of running this exact stack (1 GiB RAM, 10 GB disk, 1 container) elsewhere, from published June 2026 rates.
| Platform | Est. monthly | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Miget ★ | $7 flat | compose stacks first-class: one deploy, dedicated vCPU, managed Postgres/Valkey, volumes and TLS all included in the plan |
| Heroku | ~$50 | no volumes; nothing between 1 GB ($50) and 2.5 GB ($250) dynos - 2 GB containers cost far more than shown |
| DO App Platform | ~$17 | no persistent volumes - stateful containers need managed DBs/Spaces (base $5 Spaces included here) |
| Render | ~$15 | per-service instances (0.5 GB $7, 2 GB $25) - every container is its own paid service |
| Railway | ~$12 | usage-based ($10/GB RAM-mo); vCPU billed separately at $20/vCPU-mo on top |
| Fly.io | ~$7 | cheapest sticker price - but burstable shared CPUs (1/16 core; dedicated vCPUs cost ~2-3×), no compose deploys (one app per container, manual wiring), managed DBs billed extra |
Estimates assume RAM fully allocated at published on-demand rates - and sticker price isn't the whole comparison: the cheaper rows buy burstable shared CPUs, per-service wiring instead of a compose deploy, and managed databases billed separately. Heroku and DO App Platform have no persistent volumes at all - stateful stacks like this one need workarounds there.
#deploy it
On Miget
- Create a Compose Stack in app.miget.com pointing at the templates repository
- Set the stack path to
openobserve -
Set the required variables:
ZO_ROOT_USER_EMAIL / ZO_ROOT_USER_PASSWORD, the root account, created on first startZO_LOCAL_MODE_STORAGE=s3 + ZO_S3_*, recommended: a Miget Bucket, for unlimited stateless storage
- Deploy. Miget layers
compose.miget.yaml(RAM, privacy, volumes, managed services) automatically
Locally first?
Every template is portable, vanilla Docker Compose - the Miget overrides are ignored locally:
git clone https://github.com/deployable-sh/stacks
cd miget-compose-templates/openobserve
docker compose up -dSame files, same behavior. The template README covers connection strings and scaling notes.
#faq
How does this compare to Datadog or Splunk on cost?
Datadog Logs bills ingest (~$0.10/GB) and indexing (~$1.70 per million events) separately - you pay twice; Splunk lists in the thousands per GB/day/year. OpenObserve is a flat $13/month plan plus cheap bucket storage, and the columnar-on-S3 design is built to make retention affordable rather than punitive.
How do I get logs and traces into it?
OTLP everywhere: point any OpenTelemetry SDK, Vector, or Fluent Bit at the HTTP endpoint (/api/{org}/v1/logs|metrics|traces) or gRPC on 5081. In-project apps send over the private network; external collectors use a public custom port.
OpenObserve or the grafana-stack template?
grafana-stack (Grafana + Prometheus + Loki) for the classic metrics-and-labels-based-logs setup. OpenObserve for full-text log search at scale, built-in traces, and object-storage economics - and it is one container instead of three. Many teams run both.
Why the note about the image?
OpenObserve’s docs default to their commercial enterprise image; this template uses the AGPL open-source image from ECR Public, which is the genuinely free, self-hostable build.
Ship OpenObserve today
One compose stack, 1 GiB of RAM, from $7/month flat, and it runs on your laptop with the same files.