Elasticsearch is a self-hosted search and analytics engine requiring significant operational overhead, while Datadog is a fully managed SaaS monitoring platform with built-in integrations and faster time-to-value. Elasticsearch excels at cost control for massive datasets, while Datadog prioritizes ease of use and comprehensive observability out-of-the-box.
Elasticsearch vs Datadog — Side-by-side comparison on A Versus B
Choose Elasticsearch if you have significant DevOps resources, need maximum cost efficiency at enterprise scale (10TB+/day), require complete data ownership, or prefer open-source flexibility. Choose Datadog if you prioritize rapid deployment, integrated APM/monitoring/logging, minimal operational burden, and are willing to pay premium SaaS pricing for convenience and comprehensive observability.
Open-source distributed search and analytics engine for logs, metrics, and traces with flexible deployment options.
Cloud-native SaaS platform combining APM, infrastructure monitoring, log management, and analytics in unified dashboard.
Elasticsearch vs Datadog — Comparison Data
Structured comparison data for Elasticsearch vs Datadog with 235 attributes.
Monthly Cost (100GB index, 1M queries/month)
Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) Improvement
Total Cost of Ownership (3-year, 500GB/month ingestion)
Required Infrastructure Team Size (100 users)
Typical Query Latency (1B rows, GROUP BY)
APM (Application Performance Monitoring)
Default Data Retention (included in pricing)
Base Monthly Pricing (1GB/day ingestion)
Maximum Data Ingestion Per Day (Enterprise)
Typical Enterprise Annual Cost (1000 hosts)
Elasticsearch vs Datadog — Attribute Category Vocabulary
Taxonomy of attribute categories used to classify comparison data for Elasticsearch vs Datadog.
When should I choose Elasticsearch over Datadog?
Choose Elasticsearch if you ingest >1TB/day (where it's 50-70% cheaper), have in-house DevOps expertise, require data sovereignty, need complex custom queries, or want to avoid vendor lock-in. Elasticsearch pays for itself operationally at scale despite higher management overhead.
Is Datadog really 60% more expensive than Elasticsearch?
Yes, for high-volume ingestion. Datadog charges $0.10-$0.35/GB ingested plus additional tiers for APM/logs/metrics. A 500GB/day workload costs ~$1.8M-$2.6M annually on Datadog vs $180K-$240K on self-hosted Elasticsearch (infrastructure only). However, Datadog's managed service eliminates $400K-$600K in annual DevOps salary costs.
Can I use Elasticsearch for APM like Datadog?
Elasticsearch can ingest APM data (via OpenTelemetry, elastic-apm-agent) and Elastic APM provides tracing, but it requires manual setup and tuning. Datadog's integrated APM auto-instruments applications, auto-discovers services, and correlates traces with logs/metrics automatically—significantly easier for teams without deep observability expertise.
Does Elasticsearch require more expertise than Datadog?
Yes, substantially more. Elasticsearch requires expertise in cluster tuning, shard allocation, heap management, index lifecycle policies, and security configuration. Datadog requires API key setup and integration configuration only. For teams with <5 DevOps engineers, Datadog's managed service typically reduces toil by 40-60%.
What about data ownership and compliance?
Elasticsearch (self-hosted) gives you complete data ownership, on-premises deployment for HIPAA/PCI-DSS, and air-gapped operation. Datadog's SaaS model stores data in AWS/GCP/Azure datacenters with SOC2/FedRAMP compliance, but data residency options are limited compared to on-premises Elasticsearch.