Application Performance Monitoring
Fast & Cost-Effective APM with AI-based sampling. Runs On-Prem with no traces data sent out of your cloud.
Easy log management with fast search & data privacy at the core. No log data leaves your cloud. Ever.
Track hosts, databases, containers, and cloud services in real time — with unlimited retention and full data control.
Track every user journey in real time. Get instant visibility into performance bottlenecks with 4X faster, on-prem RUM.
Prevent downtime before it happens with proactive, scripted tests. Simulate user journeys and detect issues before customers are impacted.
Catch every error in real time. Aggregate, analyze, and resolve issues 4× faster with CubeAPM.
Track Kubernetes clusters, nodes, and pods with real-time performance insights
Application Performance Monitoring
Fast & Cost-Effective APM with AI-based sampling. Runs On-Prem with no traces data sent out of your cloud.
Easy log management with fast search & data privacy at the core. No log data leaves your cloud. Ever.
Track hosts, databases, containers, and cloud services in real time — with unlimited retention and full data control.
Track every user journey in real time. Get instant visibility into performance bottlenecks with 4X faster, on-prem RUM.
Prevent downtime before it happens with proactive, scripted tests. Simulate user journeys and detect issues before customers are impacted.
Catch every error in real time. Aggregate, analyze, and resolve issues 4× faster with CubeAPM.
Track Kubernetes clusters, nodes, and pods with real-time performance insights
SigNoz Pricing Calculator
Estimate your SigNoz bill
Enter your logs, traces, and metrics volume to get an instant monthly estimate - and see how it compares to CubeAPM's pricing.
Configure your SigNoz usage
Cost composition
SigNoz cost breakdown
| Line item | Volume | Rate | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logs ? | - | - | $0 |
| Traces ? | - | - | $0 |
| Metrics ? | - | - | $0 |
| Total ? | $0 |
What's included with CubeAPM
See how much you'd save with CubeAPM
No per-sample metric billing. No retention surcharges. No per-seat fees. A per-GB rate with logs, traces, metrics, and APM all included - running inside your own cloud.
Book a Demo →How we calculate this - sources & assumptions
- SigNoz Cloud pricing verified Jun 2026 from signoz.io pricing calculator source.
- Logs & traces: $0.30 (15d) / $0.40 (30d) / $0.60 (90d) / $0.80 (180d) / $1.40 (1yr) per GB.
- Metrics: $0.10 (1mo) / $0.12 (3mo) / $0.15 (6mo) / $0.18 (13mo) per million samples.
- Samples/month = active time series x datapoints per minute x 43,200 minutes (a flat 30-day month).
- Preset assumptions: ~4,000 active metric time series per host, a 60-second scrape interval (1 datapoint/minute), and 30-day retention for logs, traces & metrics. Every field is editable to match your own setup.
- SigNoz enforces a $49/month minimum; estimates above $2,500/mo are flagged for custom pricing.
- CubeAPM: $0.20/GB, unlimited retention & users, $1,000/month minimum.
- Metrics-to-GB conversion (CubeAPM column): metric samples are converted at 2 bytes/sample, a compressed-storage rate verified against Prometheus (1-2 B), Grafana Labs (~1.3 B) and VictoriaMetrics (<1 B) benchmarks. Example: 120,000 series x 1 datapoint/min x 43,200 min = 5,184M samples x 2 bytes = 10.37 GB/mo → x $0.20 = $2.07/mo.
- Not affiliated with or endorsed by SigNoz, Inc.
Estimates based on publicly available SigNoz list pricing, verified June 2026. Actual bills vary by contract terms, volume discounts, and usage patterns. This calculator is not affiliated with or endorsed by SigNoz, Inc.
Why use this SigNoz pricing calculator?
SigNoz Cloud pricing is usage-based across three signals: logs, traces, and metrics. Each is billed separately by volume, and the cost grows as your systems generate more telemetry. Unlike many observability platforms, SigNoz does not charge per user, per host, per node, or for custom metrics. But the base plan fee, per-GB rates, and optional retention extensions can still produce a bill that is hard to estimate without a clear picture of your data volumes.
This calculator helps you:
- Estimate your SigNoz Cloud bill before starting or scaling up
- Understand how your log volume, trace volume, and metrics sample count each contribute to cost
- Model the impact of extending retention beyond the default 15-day window for logs and traces
- Compare SigNoz Cloud's usage-based pricing against a self-hosted alternative using the same assumptions
The goal is not to predict an exact invoice. Actual costs depend on your ingestion patterns and any retention customizations you configure with the SigNoz support team. But it gives you a reliable cost range to plan with.
What Makes SigNoz Costs Hard to Predict
SigNoz’s pricing is genuinely simpler than most observability platforms. There is one rate for logs, one rate for traces, one rate for metrics, and no user or host charges. But a few specific patterns can cause costs to grow faster than expected.
Metrics sample volume grows with scrape frequency and cardinality
The metrics billing unit is the sample, not the timeseries or the metric name. Two variables drive metrics costs simultaneously: how many timeseries you have, and how frequently each one reports.
A Kubernetes cluster with 500 pods, each reporting 50 metrics every 15 seconds, generates 500 x 50 x 4 samples per minute = 100,000 samples per minute, approximately 4.3 billion samples per month. At $0.10/million samples, that is $430/month from metrics alone, before any logs or traces. Reducing scrape frequency from 15 to 60 seconds on low-priority targets cuts that contribution by 75%.
High-cardinality labels compound this. Adding a label like pod or endpoint to a metric multiplies the number of active timeseries by the cardinality of that label, each generating its own sample stream.
Default 15-day retention is short for most production use cases
Fifteen days of log and trace retention covers immediate debugging and alerting. It does not cover:
- Incident postmortems that review behavior from two to four weeks ago
- Compliance requirements mandating 30, 90, or 180 days of log retention
- Capacity planning that requires trend data over multiple weeks
Extending to 30-day retention for logs and traces increases the per-GB cost. Extending to 90 or 180 days increases it further. For teams that assume 15 days is sufficient and then extend later, this can be a meaningful upward revision to an already-running bill.
The $49 included usage is consumed faster at higher retention
The $49/month base fee includes usage worth $49 at default retention rates. When you extend retention, the effective cost per GB increases. This means the same volume of ingested data at longer retention consumes more of your monthly credit faster, and overage charges begin sooner.
Verbose logging and high-frequency tracing grow costs proportionally
SigNoz Cloud bills strictly on ingestion volume. There are no smart filters that reduce cost automatically. Debug-level logs from production services, 100% trace sampling rates, and frequent metric scraping all translate directly into GB ingested and samples counted. Teams that do not configure sampling or filtering at the collector level pay for everything they send.
The gap between Teams and Enterprise
The Teams plan is pay-as-you-go above $49/month. Enterprise starts at $4,000/month with usage included up to that amount and offers volume discounts on annual commits. There is no published middle tier between these. Teams with consistent monthly spend between a few hundred dollars and $4,000 stay on the Teams PAYG plan with no volume discount available.
What Typically Drives SigNoz Costs Up
High scrape frequency for metrics
Every reduction in scrape interval multiplies sample count. Moving from 60-second to 15-second intervals quadruples metric costs from the same set of targets.
High-cardinality metric labels
Labels like user_id, request_id, pod, or endpoint multiply active timeseries. Each unique label value creates a separate timeseries, each generating its own sample stream.
100% trace sampling
Sending every span from every request at high throughput quickly grows trace ingestion volume. A service handling 500 requests per second with 10 spans per request generates roughly 130 million spans per month, well above the $49 included usage.
Verbose log levels in production
Debug or info-level logs from all services produce far more GB than warn/error-level logs. Forgetting to revert log levels after a debugging session is a common source of unexpected bills.
Extending retention without modeling the cost increase
Changing from 15-day to 90-day retention for logs and traces increases cost per GB significantly. Teams that extend retention without re-estimating their bill often see a larger increase than expected.
Ingesting unnecessary signals
Sending duplicate logs from multiple collection pipelines, over-instrumenting with redundant metrics exporters, or collecting telemetry from non-production environments on the paid plan all contribute to avoidable ingestion volume.
How to Manage SigNoz Costs
Set ingestion limits with Ingestion Guard
SigNoz includes an Ingestion Guard feature that lets you set hard limits on data ingestion by signal type. When a limit is reached, ingestion stops rather than continuing to accrue charges. This is the most direct cost control available and the recommended first step for any team that wants to avoid surprise bills.
Use Cost Meter to understand what is driving spend
SigNoz’s Cost Meter provides a breakdown of ingestion by signal type (logs, traces, metrics) with the last 30 days of usage and hourly granularity. Reviewing it regularly helps identify which signal is growing fastest and which services or pipelines are contributing the most volume before costs escalate.
Tune metrics scrape frequency by priority
Not all metrics need the same scrape interval. High-priority production metrics may warrant 15 or 30-second intervals. Low-priority infrastructure metrics, background jobs, or dev-environment targets can be scraped every 60 or 120 seconds with no meaningful loss of signal. Segmenting scrape frequency by priority is typically the highest-leverage action for reducing metrics cost.
Configure trace sampling at the collector level
Apply sampling at the OpenTelemetry Collector, not at the application SDK. Tail-based sampling, which keeps traces for errors, slow requests, and anomalies while dropping traces for routine successful requests, reduces volume efficiently without losing signal over failures. Sampling rates of 10-20% for successful requests are common in production.
Filter logs before ingestion using processing pipelines
SigNoz’s log pipeline feature lets you parse, filter, and drop log lines before they are stored. Health check endpoint logs, static asset requests, and routine scheduled job output are common candidates for dropping entirely. Reducing ingested GB at the pipeline stage requires no application code changes.
Match retention to actual requirements per signal
Before extending retention uniformly across all signals, assess what you actually need:
- Logs for compliance: may require 90 or 180 days
- Traces for postmortems: typically 30 days is sufficient
- Metrics for capacity planning: 3 to 6 months is common
Extending retention selectively by signal type rather than applying the maximum to all three keeps costs proportional to actual requirements.
When cost optimization becomes ongoing work
The measures above are effective but require continuous attention as systems evolve. High-cardinality labels reappear when new engineers instrument services without billing awareness. Log verbosity creeps back up after debugging sessions. New services get added without adjusting sampling or ingestion limits.
At larger scale, managing observability spend inside a per-GB model becomes a recurring operational task. This is often when teams begin evaluating whether structural cost controls enforced by architecture better fit their needs than process-based optimization.
SigNoz Pricing vs CubeAPM Pricing: A Structural Difference
SigNoz and CubeAPM share meaningful common ground: both are OpenTelemetry-native, both avoid per-user and per-host fees, and both are built as transparent alternatives to Datadog and New Relic. But the deployment model and cost structure differ in ways that matter at scale.
SigNoz offers a free self-managed Community Edition and a fully managed SaaS (Teams Cloud). In the Teams Cloud model, your telemetry is sent to and stored on SigNoz’s infrastructure. You pay a base fee plus per-GB and per-million-sample rates above the included usage.
CubeAPM is self-hosted only. It runs inside your own cloud account or on-premises environment. There is no SaaS option. Telemetry never leaves your infrastructure. You pay $0.15/GB of ingested data, and storage and retention are governed by your own infrastructure with no vendor-controlled retention tiers.
For a detailed breakdown of features and pricing, see SigNoz pricing and review.
| Area | SigNoz Cloud (Teams) | CubeAPM |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Fully managed SaaS | Self-hosted in your own cloud or on-premises |
| Pricing model | $49/month base + $0.30/GB logs/traces + $0.10/mn samples | $0.15/GB ingested across all signals |
| Data residency | SigNoz infrastructure (US, EU, or India) | Your own infrastructure; data never leaves |
| Default log/trace retention | 15 days | Unlimited; governed by your own storage |
| Extended retention | Available at higher cost; contact support to change | No retention fees; storage is your own infrastructure cost |
| Metrics retention | 1 month default; up to 13 months at higher cost | Unlimited |
| Free tier | Free trial available; Community Edition always free (self-hosted) | None; free trial available |
| Community Edition | Yes, open-source and free to self-host | No; CubeAPM is fully commercial |
| Startup discount | $19/month for qualifying early-stage companies | Not applicable |
| BYOC | Enterprise only | All plans (self-hosted by design) |
| Support | In-product chat, email, Slack (Teams); dedicated (Enterprise) | Included with plan |
Where the cost models diverge in practice
- Per-GB rate: SigNoz Cloud charges $0.30/GB for logs and traces. CubeAPM charges $0.15/GB across all signals. At 1 TB/month, that difference is $150/month before infrastructure costs.
- Retention: SigNoz Cloud defaults to 15 days for logs and traces, with higher costs to extend. CubeAPM retention is unlimited, bounded only by the storage you provision, with no per-day or per-tier billing.
- Operational overhead: SigNoz Cloud is fully managed with no cluster to run. CubeAPM requires you to provision and operate infrastructure in your own cloud, which has its own engineering cost.
Choose SigNoz Cloud if you want a fully managed platform, zero infrastructure overhead, and a transparent per-GB model with no user or host fees.
Choose CubeAPM if you need data sovereignty, unlimited retention, a lower per-GB rate, and are prepared to self-host inside your own cloud account.
Note: The SigNoz pricing calculator above is designed to help you see both cost structures clearly using your own data volume estimates.
Disclaimer: Pricing based on SigNoz’s public pricing page at signoz.io/pricing, verified July 2026. Actual costs vary based on usage patterns, retention configuration, and Enterprise contract terms. This calculator is not affiliated with or endorsed by SigNoz.