Best observability free tier (2026)
The most generous permanent free tier is New Relic (100 GB ingest/month + 1 full user, free forever), followed by Grafana Cloud (10K active series, 50 GB logs/traces/profiles, 3 users) and Honeycomb (20M events/month, unlimited users). For error tracking, Sentry's Developer tier (5,000 errors) is the default free entry. Pricing snapshot: June 2026 - verify current pricing on the vendor's site before relying on these figures.
Source: Vendor pricing pages. Data as of June 2026.
Ranked by free-tier generosity
| # | Vendor | Free tier |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Relic | Free forever: 100 GB ingest/month + 1 Full Platform user + unlimited basic users. |
| 2 | Grafana Cloud | Free forever: 10K active metric series, 50 GB logs, 50 GB traces, 50 GB profiles, 3 users, 14-day retention. |
| 3 | Honeycomb | Free: 20 million events/month, 1 environment, 60-day retention, unlimited users. |
| 4 | Better Stack | Free: 10 monitors, 1 status page, 3 GB logs, 30 GB metrics, 100K exceptions, 5K session replays. |
| 5 | Site24x7 | Free forever plan: up to 5 monitors with basic website/uptime monitoring; 30-day trial of paid plans. |
| 6 | Sumo Logic | Free plan: $0/month, limited daily ingest, no credit card required. |
| 7 | Datadog | Free plan: Infrastructure for up to 5 hosts with 1-day metric retention; 14-day free trial of the full platform. |
| 8 | Last9 | Free trial / limited free usage; primary commercial plan is the usage-based Pro tier. |
| 9 | Logz.io | Free trial; community plan with limited daily volume. No large permanent free tier. |
Source: Vendor pricing pages. Data as of June 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Which observability tool has the best free tier?
New Relic has the most generous permanent free tier: 100 GB of telemetry ingest per month plus one full platform user, free forever. Grafana Cloud is a close second (10K active metric series, 50 GB logs/traces/profiles, 3 users) and Honeycomb gives 20M events/month with unlimited users. For error tracking specifically, Sentry's free Developer tier (5,000 errors) is the standard.
Can you run a real app on a free observability tier?
For a small or side-project service, yes - New Relic's 100 GB and Grafana's 50 GB logs cover modest production telemetry, and Honeycomb's 20M events suit a low-traffic app. Free tiers cap retention, users and volume, so plan to upgrade once you scale hosts, log volume or team size.
Keep exploring
- Full free-tier hub (incl. trial-only vendors)
- All rankings · all vendors
- Observability cost calculator
Last updated: 2026-06-21