BizFirst Observe
Cost Comparison
Estimated monthly cost comparison across all observability options for a representative BizFirstGO deployment: 10 tenants, 5 GB/day log ingestion, 10,000 series metrics, 5% trace sampling. All figures are approximate and based on public pricing as of mid-2025.
Monthly Cost Comparison (10 Tenants, 5 GB/day Logs)
| Option | Logs | Metrics | Traces | Total/Month | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-Hosted (BizFirst Observe) | ~$25 (S3) | ~$10 (disk) | ~$5 (S3) | ~$200-300 | Includes EC2 compute; excludes engineering time |
| Grafana Cloud (Pro) | ~$150 (5GB×30d×$1) | ~$50 (10k series) | ~$75 (50GB) | ~$275-400 | Closest to self-hosted; same query languages |
| Azure Monitor | ~$200 (Log Analytics) | ~$60 (AMP) | ~$80 (App Insights) | ~$340-500 | Best if already on Azure; KQL required for logs |
| AWS CloudWatch + AMP | ~$180 (CloudWatch Logs) | ~$55 (AMP) | ~$40 (X-Ray) | ~$275-400 | Best if on AWS; CloudWatch Insights for logs |
| Datadog | ~$450 (log mgmt) | ~$200 (infra+APM) | ~$200 (APM) | ~$850-1,300 | Most expensive; richest feature set |
Engineering Time Cost
| Option | Initial Setup | Ongoing Ops (per month) | Annual Engineering Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-Hosted | 80-120 hours | 10-20 hours | ~200 hours × $150/hr = $30,000 |
| Grafana Cloud | 16-32 hours | 2-4 hours | ~60 hours × $150/hr = $9,000 |
| Azure Monitor | 40-80 hours (KQL migration) | 5-10 hours | ~150 hours × $150/hr = $22,500 |
| AWS CloudWatch + AMP | 32-60 hours | 5-8 hours | ~120 hours × $150/hr = $18,000 |
| Datadog | 8-16 hours | 2-4 hours | ~56 hours × $150/hr = $8,400 |
Total Cost of Ownership Includes Engineering Time
Self-hosted BizFirst Observe has the lowest infrastructure cost but the highest engineering time. Grafana Cloud has similar infrastructure cost but 3-4× lower engineering overhead — making it comparable or better on total cost for small teams. Datadog's high license cost is partially offset by the lowest setup and operations time.