simpletel vs Datadog
Datadog is the broadest observability platform, with more than twenty separately priced products. simpletel is deliberately narrow: an OTLP backend with one bill and one metered unit. The honest difference is scope, not just price.
Vendor figures as of October 2026, from the vendor's pricing page (https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/). simpletel figures are read from this site's plan catalog at request time.
| Datadog | simpletel | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Trial only (Agent Observability: 40k LLM spans/mo) | 2M records/mo, 7-day retention |
| Entry paid | Infra $15/host/mo (annual); APM $31/host (annual) / $36 monthly | Starter $19/mo · $190/yr (25M records, 30d), no per-host line |
| Metered unit | Per-host + per-signal; logs $0.10/GB ingest + ~$1.70/M indexed events (secondary-source figure — check Datadog's page) | records; $0.50/M Starter, $0.30/M Team |
| Spend caps | Not advertised; compounded per-signal is the bill-shock complaint | ingest stops at 2x allowance; raisable to 3x |
| Retention | 15-day log tiers; LLM add-ons 30/60/90d | 7/30/90d, 90–365d custom |
What Datadog does better
Depth and procurement. Datadog has integrations, dashboards, alerting, security products, and the enterprise controls (SSO, SLAs, support) a large organization expects. Its Agent Observability line also goes deep on LLM tracing.
Where simpletel wins
One bill and one metered unit — records — with no per-host APM line and no compounded per-signal pricing, plus server-enforced hard caps and a single-binary self-host option. Setup is agent-native: install, point upstream OTLP at it, done.
The tradeoff
Datadog prices per host, per signal, and per indexed event — often multiplied together — which is the recurring source of bill shock users report. simpletel is not an enterprise platform: no SSO, no SLA, no multi-region — that is the Scale “talk to us” door. This page compares list rates only, not negotiated enterprise contracts.
When simpletel is the wrong choice
Pick Datadog if you need a single platform across infra, APM, logs, security, and more; if procurement requires SSO, an SLA, or multi-region; or if you want deep LLM/agent observability with vendor support. simpletel is one backend, one small VM — if those enterprise requirements are real, it is the wrong choice.