Observability Cost per Microservice

Allocate observability spend to each service by combining log ingestion, metrics fan-out, trace sampling, dashboards, and miscellaneous monthly fees.

Ingested gigabytes attributable to this service each month.
Provider's storage and indexing rate per billed gigabyte.
Optional. Defaults to 0 if blank (unique metric streams reported monthly).
Optional. Defaults to $0 if blank (cost per million metric time series).
Optional. Defaults to 0 if blank (monthly spans generated before sampling).
Optional. Defaults to 100% if blank (percentage of spans retained after sampling).
Optional. Defaults to $0 if blank (billing rate for one million stored spans).
Optional. Defaults to 0 if blank (charged dashboards, alert packs, or synthetics).
Optional. Defaults to $6 if blank.
Optional. Defaults to $0 if blank (agent licenses, storage add-ons, etc.).

Financial planning guide only—verify final charges in your observability vendor invoice before budgeting.

Examples

  • 180 GB at $0.28, three dashboards at $6 ⇒ $68.40 per month
  • 2.5 M spans, 20% sampling, $45 per million spans ⇒ $22.50 per month

FAQ

How do I handle compressed logs?

Use the provider's billed gigabytes after compression because pricing is tied to stored volume, not raw payload size.

Can I model tiered pricing?

Enter an average blended rate that reflects your expected tier for the coming month, or rerun the calculation with separate tiers and sum the totals.

Where do infrastructure agents fit?

Add their monthly license or host fees to the other charges field so those costs stay associated with the microservice.

What about annual commitments?

Divide committed spend by 12 and include it under other monthly charges to keep comparisons consistent across services.

Additional Information

  • Trace sampling percentage applies to the generated span volume so you can model head-based and tail-based sampling costs.
  • Dashboards count covers visualisations, alert bundles, or synthetic checks that carry per-unit platform fees.
  • Use the extra charges field for host agents, retention upgrades, or credit overages tied to this microservice.