A detailed comparison of Prometheus and Datadog to help you choose the right tool for your needs.
Open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit.
Monitoring and analytics platform for cloud-scale applications and infrastructure.
| Plan | Prometheus | Datadog |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | ✓ Fully open source | ✓ Free for 5 hosts |
| Lowest Paid | Free (self-hosted) | $15/host/month |
| Enterprise | Managed options available | Custom |
| Feature | Prometheus | Datadog |
|---|---|---|
| Time Series DB | ✓ | — |
| PromQL | ✓ | — |
| Pull-based Collection | ✓ | — |
| Service Discovery | ✓ | — |
| Alertmanager | ✓ | — |
| Client Libraries | ✓ | — |
| Infrastructure monitoring | — | ✓ |
| APM | — | ✓ |
| Log management | — | ✓ |
| Synthetic monitoring | — | ✓ |
| Open Source | ✓ | ✗ |
| Rating | ⭐ 4.4 | ⭐ 4.4 |
Choose Prometheus if: You need cloud-native infrastructure monitoring. Prometheus excels with its industry standard for cloud-native and powerful query language.
Choose Datadog if: You need enterprise monitoring of complex cloud infrastructures. Datadog stands out with its comprehensive monitoring and great visualizations.
Best free option: Both Prometheus and Datadog offer free tiers. Prometheus offers "Fully open source" while Datadog offers "Free for 5 hosts".
It depends on your needs. Prometheus is better for cloud-native infrastructure monitoring, while Datadog is better for enterprise monitoring of complex cloud infrastructures. Both are excellent tools rated 4.4 and 4.4 respectively.
Prometheus starts at Free (self-hosted) while Datadog starts at $15/host/month. Both offer free tiers.
Most tools offer import/export features to help you migrate. We recommend trying Datadog's free tier before fully committing to a switch.
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