# We’re decreasing the price of metrics by 200x I screwed up — and I want to apologize. **A bit of background, first:** The team here at Better Stack built a state-of-the-art data processing pipeline. Storing logs in object storage while keeping derived metrics on local NVMe SSD drives brings the best of both worlds: * **low-latency dashboards at a massive scale** * and extremely fast **high-throughput log search** with horizontally scalable ingestion. So when it came time to start charging for metrics in the summer of 2024, I looked for inspiration across our competitors. **I knew we had superior tech and could charge less than our competitors. But how much less should we charge?** ## I was blown away by the lack of transparency when it came to pricing metrics Imagine you have a small app generating 200 GB of uncompressed logs per month along with derived metrics on the side: **how much will the datadogs of the world charge you for metrics?** I dare you to try to figure that out from Datadog pricing page. *"Is it a standard metric? Or a custom metric. Or a custom event? Ok, so how many custom metrics do I have when I exclude the included hosted metrics… (5mins later) Alright, I give up"* Oh, I see — **that’s how Datadog makes $1B per year from metrics alone:** ![Datadog_arr](https://imagedelivery.net/xZXo0QFi-1_4Zimer-T0XQ/65889f9d-fb8c-4b9b-b632-937def03cf00/md2x =642x588) Aiming to be transparent, we designed a simple formula for charging for metrics based on the idea that **more data means higher cost**: **Metrics data points** = [active time series × aggregations × retention in days](https://betterstack.com/docs/logs/billing-for-metrics/) To set the price per data point right, I spun a small app and [configured the Datadog agent to send data to Better Stack](https://betterstack.com/docs/logs/datadog-agent/) to measure how much metrics volume it produced and **priced it to be 10x less expensive than Datadog.** ## Turns out 10x cheaper than Datadog is still super expensive 🤦🏻‍♂️ In the meantime, I asked our team at Better Stack to reach out to existing customers who have been using metrics in ‘beta’, while they were completely free. And I open Twitter. Boom. ![Twitter_screenshot](https://imagedelivery.net/xZXo0QFi-1_4Zimer-T0XQ/95b8a5ba-4d49-4116-cb6c-8a90eec3b300/lg2x =531x165) Seeing tweets like Bruno’s triggered my inner engineer who wanted to argue: *“Just [optimize your metrics cardinality](https://betterstack.com/docs/logs/how-to-manage-high-cardinality-in-metrics/) and the cost will drop by 100x!”* But our customers shouldn’t have to be experts in cardinality reduction — I bet most of you have no idea what I’m talking about in the first place. It’s *my* responsibility to design a product that makes it easy to control costs. And to make it cheap for basic use cases by default. **Bruno, I’m sorry for the emotional roller-coaster of getting a surprise $35,000/month bill.** That’s just not right and it was never my intention. ## Going forward, we’ll be adjusting the price for 1 billion of retained metrics data points from $1,000 to $5. That’s 200x cheaper. **There’s no good reason to self-host Prometheus anymore.** And yes, that’s **a lot** cheaper than Datadog. ![Datadog_pricing](https://imagedelivery.net/xZXo0QFi-1_4Zimer-T0XQ/bc757d01-6ffc-49b9-8875-d48c091c1800/public =555x101) ## The industry needs more visibility into usage & pricing We still have a long way to go, but here are things we’re doing to make sure our customers don’t get surprise bills. ### Granular day-by-day usage reporting in a single place No need to guess how many metrics you’re generating anymore. Simply send us 1 day of data and we’ll extrapolate the estimated usage for you. All your usage in a single screen. Available in **Settings → Usage**. ![VF3D6lacngBxn3u9wsEONSHDY5C5HrS9tmuFuva1.jpeg](https://imagedelivery.net/xZXo0QFi-1_4Zimer-T0XQ/21443860-f8b6-46fb-e48b-6ef310ff5d00/md1x =3680x2276) ### Recommendations on reducing the cardinality of your metrics Go to **Sources → Your source → Metrics** to see the cardinality breakdown per column for all your metrics. Consider generalizing your high-cardinality metrics to save on costs. ![CleanShot 2024-10-14 at 12.59.08.png](https://imagedelivery.net/xZXo0QFi-1_4Zimer-T0XQ/c0519ffe-5da7-44a6-1bb4-2c37d0189a00/lg2x =1374x670) ### Simple to configure billing alerts Get alerted when your usage spikes. Configure a billing alert in **Settings → Billing → Advanced settings**. ![CleanShot 2024-10-14 at 12.55.01.png](https://imagedelivery.net/xZXo0QFi-1_4Zimer-T0XQ/b758a5be-fa35-4105-38af-c598a7ceb200/orig =2094x660) ### Set a spending limit Configure a maximum dollar amount you're willing to spend per month. Please be careful: we will completely stop processing your data once you hit the limit. Soon to be available in **Settings → Billing → Advanced settings**. ### Single straightforward pricing page No need for 30 pricing sub-pages. All of [Better Stack pricing](/pricing) is explained in a single page, made for humans: ![ZAvFLetcl3iUPUYYkb7DjHUKidqqwMzetdN4Sd5d.jpeg](https://imagedelivery.net/xZXo0QFi-1_4Zimer-T0XQ/74aea8cb-a48f-4a51-e3cc-fc92f6d77a00/lg2x =3680x2276) And we have a lot more in the works. Stay tuned! Let’s build! 💪 Juraj [ad-uptime]