OpenObserve Pricing: Managed vs Self-Hosted
Managed OpenObserve is billed by usage. Self-hosted, this stack measures 1 GiB across 1 service and fits a $7/month flat plan.
#the numbers
Managed prices as of June 2026, each linked to its source. The self-hosted row is not an estimate: the RAM figure is what this stack allocates in its compose file, and the plan is the smallest one that holds it.
| Option | Plan | Monthly | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted on Miget ★ | 1 GiB, 1 vCPU | $7 | the whole stack, flat - no per-user or per-request metering, and the plan holds your other apps too |
| 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.
#on usage-based pricing
Datadog Logs, Logz.io, Splunk bill by usage rather than a fixed monthly price, so a table cannot compare it honestly. The structural difference is the one that matters: a flat plan has a known worst case, and a meter does not.
#what it costs on other platforms
Same stack, published rates elsewhere - estimates from each platform's own pricing page, not quotes.
| Platform | Estimated monthly | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Miget ★ | $7 | flat plan, 1 GiB - databases included, no meters |
| 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 |
#sizing, if you outgrow the small plan
The $7 plan is the smallest that fits. For production traffic you generally want the next tier up, and dedicated vCPU if the workload is CPU-bound rather than idle-waiting.
| Use case | Plan | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Fits the stack | 1 GiB, 1 vCPU shared | $7 |
| Comfortable, room for your own apps | 2 GiB, 1 vCPU shared | $13 |
| Dedicated vCPU (production) | 2 GiB, 1 vCPU dedicated | $22 |
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.
Run OpenObserve yourself
The compose file is open source and runs locally with docker compose up. One step to deploy it to
Miget on the $7/month plan, databases included.