Choose self-hosted Grafana Loki only if your team can operate and secure the logging stack; choose a hosted logging service if reducing infrastructure work matters more and its cost, limits, retention and controls fit your workload. There is no universal cost winner. Use these four tests to make the decision with your actual logs and requirements.
1. Who will operate the system?
Self-hosted Loki is not a set-and-forget way to get free logging. Grafana describes self-hosting as taking responsibility for availability, scaling and maintenance across the stack. Before choosing it, identify who will handle upgrades, monitoring, backups, incidents and capacity planning. If no person or team owns those tasks, the apparent savings may conceal an operational gap.
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A hosted service shifts much of the infrastructure operation to its provider, but your team still configures log collection, access, retention and spending limits. Managed infrastructure reduces work; it does not remove responsibility for how your logs are collected and used. Grafana’s Loki deployment-mode guidance explains the operational distinction.
2. What will it cost at your actual volume?
Estimate costs using your expected ingestion and retention, rather than comparing “open source” with a single hosted price. Loki indexes label metadata and stores compressed log chunks. Depending on its configuration, those chunks can go to object storage such as S3 or GCS, or to a local filesystem. Self-hosting therefore needs a budget for storage, compute, backups, networking and the time spent operating the service. Loki’s storage documentation describes the storage model.
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For a hosted service, check how ingestion, processing and retained data are charged. Grafana’s Logs pricing page, accessed in October 2026, lists the following terms; rates and allowances can change, so confirm them on the live Grafana pricing page before budgeting:
| Grafana Logs option | Vendor-listed terms |
|---|---|
| Free | 50 GB ingested per month and 14-day retention. |
| Pro usage rates | Starting rates of $0.050 per GB processed, $0.400 per GB written and $0.100 per GB retained. |
| Pro platform fee | $19 per month, including 50 GB ingested per month and 30-day retention, with usage-based charges beyond the included terms. |
These are vendor-listed rates and allowances, not a quote for your workload or an independent cost comparison. Model a representative month, including how much data you retain, and compare the resulting hosted charges with the full cost of running Loki yourself. The available figures do not establish that either approach is cheaper in every case.
3. Do access controls and data location meet your requirements?
Do not expose a self-hosted Loki endpoint on the assumption that Loki will authenticate callers. The HTTP API reference says authentication and authorization are not built into the API itself. In a single-tenant self-hosted deployment, Loki does not enforce authentication by default; when access needs to be restricted, place an authentication layer such as a reverse proxy in front of it. See the Loki HTTP API reference and Grafana’s authentication guidance.
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Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.4. Do ingestion, query and retention fit?
Compare your normal and peak log volume, required retention and query needs with the hosted plan’s current limits. Grafana’s listed Logs terms include 14-day retention for Free and 30 days with the Pro platform fee; those are plan terms, not a promise that they meet your retention policy. Confirm current allowances and any usage-based charges before relying on them.
With self-managed Loki, retention can be configured, but the Compactor deletes data only when retention is configured. The operator must manage the storage backend and the consequences of that configuration. In particular, filesystem storage does not automatically remove old log data just because disk space is running low. Review Loki’s retention documentation and assign an owner for the setting and storage capacity.
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Check compatibility before migrating or building around an API. Loki documents POST /loki/api/v1/push and POST /otlp/v1/logs for ingestion, and queries use LogQL. Confirm that your collector or application can send a supported format and that your team can express its searches and dashboards in LogQL. Another hosted vendor may expose different ingestion endpoints or query behavior; do not assume its API is interchangeable with Loki’s. See the Loki HTTP API documentation.
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How to make the choice
- Lean toward self-hosted Loki if your team can own availability, scaling, maintenance, storage and access controls, or keeping logs on your own infrastructure is a requirement.
- Lean toward hosted logging if reducing infrastructure work is a priority and the provider’s current price, retention, security controls and ingestion limits fit your workload.
- If the decision is close, send a small, representative workload through each viable option. Compare observed ingestion, query behavior, retention and the operating effort required. This is a practical evaluation method, not a performance benchmark: the available evidence does not establish a latency or throughput winner.
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