BizFirst Observe
Enterprise Cost Model
Enterprise observability costs come from three buckets: compute (Kubernetes node hours), storage (S3 data volume), and licensing (Grafana Enterprise). This page provides reference cost estimates for different deployment scales to help compare self-hosted enterprise vs. managed PaaS options.
Self-Hosted Enterprise Cost Reference
| Deployment Scale | Compute (AWS) | Storage (S3) | Grafana Enterprise | Total/Month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small (10 tenants, 5 GB/day logs) | ~$200 (2× m6i.xlarge) | ~$15 (150 GB S3) | ~$400 (10 users) | ~$615/month |
| Medium (50 tenants, 30 GB/day logs) | ~$800 (6× m6i.xlarge) | ~$70 (700 GB S3) | ~$1,200 (30 users) | ~$2,070/month |
| Large (200 tenants, 100 GB/day logs) | ~$2,500 (multi-node) | ~$230 (2.3 TB S3) | ~$3,000 (75 users) | ~$5,730/month |
Self-Hosted vs. Managed PaaS Comparison
| Factor | Self-Hosted Enterprise | Grafana Cloud (PaaS) |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | 2-4 weeks | 1-2 days |
| Operational overhead | High (ongoing) | Minimal |
| Cost at small scale | Higher (fixed infra cost) | Lower (pay-as-you-go) |
| Cost at large scale | Lower per GB | Higher (per-GB pricing) |
| Data residency control | Full control | Depends on Grafana Cloud region |
| Upgrade management | Manual (your team) | Automatic (Grafana Cloud) |
Cost Optimization Checklist
# Apply these optimizations before concluding that enterprise scale is needed:
1. Log level filtering: Remove DEBUG logs from OTel pipeline (60-80% volume reduction)
otel-collector: filter/drop-debug processor
2. Trace sampling: Reduce from 100% to 5-10% (95% Tempo cost reduction)
tail_sampling: probabilistic {sampling_percentage: 5}
3. Metric cardinality: Audit and remove high-cardinality labels (50-80% metric cost reduction)
Prometheus: topk(10, count by (__name__)({__name__=~".+"}))
4. S3 lifecycle rules: Move Loki chunks to Glacier after 30 days (80% S3 cost reduction for old data)
5. Prometheus retention: Keep only 90 days local; use Thanos for long-term on S3-IA
6. Short Tempo retention: 7 days is usually sufficient; do not store traces beyond 30 days
# After applying all optimizations, re-measure actual cost before upgrading to enterprise scale.
Compare Total Cost of Ownership, Not Just License Cost
Grafana Enterprise licensing looks expensive until you factor in the engineering time to build equivalent SSO integration, audit logging, and report generation from scratch. For a team of 2-3 platform engineers, the build-vs-buy calculation often favors Grafana Enterprise — especially when audit log compliance is a hard requirement from the legal or security team.