We cannot substantiate an “actually cost us” total from the available records: no attributable invoices, contract rates, usage exports, labor log, or post-migration account is available. Rather than invent a number or present public list prices as our bill, this article sets out the cost ledger needed to calculate the real figure and explains which billing dimensions can change it.
Why there is no defensible migration total here
A reliable total requires the organization’s own Datadog and Dynatrace invoices, contract terms, usage records, and migration labor data. Without them, neither the before-and-after spend nor any savings can be established. Public rates explain how a bill may be calculated; they do not reveal a customer’s negotiated price, platform commitment, usage, or migration cost.
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Keep logs-only charges separate from broader observability spend if other products moved at the same time. Do not substitute another customer’s outcome for your own: Dynatrace’s customer stories are not a comparable account of this migration.
What the vendors charge for
Datadog: ingestion and indexed events
Datadog bills ingested logs according to the gigabytes submitted to its Logs service. Indexed log events are a separate dimension, charged per million at the rate associated with the selected retention policy. A comparison that calls both charges simply “price per GB” hides a material difference. Datadog’s public billing documentation does not establish this customer’s negotiated rates: Datadog Log Management billing.
Dynatrace: processed volume, retention, and queries
Dynatrace’s current public pricing page lists these USD Log Analytics rates, accessed in 2026. They are displayed rates, not a customer quote or proof of what this migration cost.
| Log Analytics pricing dimension | Usage-based option | Bundled-query option |
|---|---|---|
| Ingest and process | $0.20 per GiB | $0.20 per GiB |
| Retention | $0.0007 per GiB-day | $0.02 per GiB-day with included queries, for a configured 10–35 day included-query period |
| Queries | $0.0035 per GiB scanned | Included within the configured 10–35 day period |
For bundled queries, retention beyond the included-query window can use usage-based retention and query pricing. The options therefore cannot be compared on ingest rate alone. See Dynatrace pricing and its log ingestion and processing documentation.
Dynatrace describes DPS as a minimum annual platform commitment consumed according to actual use and rate-card pricing. Its pricing page puts it this way: “Make an annual commitment at the platform level—not per capability or per month.” The quote is a vendor statement, not an individual customer’s cost report. A commitment drawdown and an invoice may not be equivalent to a simple multiplication of public list rates by one month’s usage.
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Processed data may exceed source-side volume
Dynatrace calculates ingestion and processing usage using ingested GiBs multiplied by the rate-card price. Enrichment and processing can increase the data volume by a factor of 2 or more, depending on the source, technology, attributes, and metadata. That is a documented possibility, not a multiplier to apply automatically to every migration. Measure destination-side processed volume during a representative pilot rather than assuming source bytes equal billable GiBs.
Rank #3
Retention and queries depend on how teams use logs
Dynatrace documents log retention from 10 days to 10 years. Longer retention, the amount of data retained each day, and query scan volume all affect the cost under usage-based pricing. Teams should record the configured retention and actual GiB scanned, not infer the bill from ingested volume alone. With bundled queries, compare usage inside the configured 10–35 day included period separately from any data outside it.
Build a reconciled migration cost ledger
Use matched production periods and preserve the units shown by each vendor. The following categories separate recurring platform spend from the one-time work and temporary overlap that can distort a headline comparison.
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| Ledger row | Evidence to collect | How to report it |
|---|---|---|
| Datadog before cutover | Invoices, applicable contract rates, ingested volume, indexed volume, and retention policy | Show the actual billed logs cost for the chosen period; keep ingestion and indexing distinguishable. |
| Dynatrace after cutover | Invoices or DPS commitment drawdown, processed GiB, retained GiB-days, scanned GiB, and configured retention | Identify the period and pricing treatment; distinguish observed charges from estimates based on public rates. |
| Dual-running overlap | Dates both systems served the workload and charges incurred in each | Show the overlap as its own temporary cost, not as normal steady-state spend. |
| Migration labor and services | Hours by role, labor-rate assumptions, and any vendor or consultant fees | State which engineering, operations, security, and finance work is counted. Do not imply a service was used without records. |
| One-time migration work | Work to rewrite parsing, dashboards, alerts, and access controls | Separate implementation effort from recurring platform charges. |
| Usage changes | Changes in log volume, enrichment, retention, query behavior, and workload during the compared periods | Annotate changes that make before-and-after periods unlike one another. |
For a total over a chosen period, add recurring spend over that period to implementation expenses and overlap charges, while keeping each visible as a separate line. Label estimates and disclose their assumptions; use invoice and labor records for observed amounts. This makes it possible to tell whether a recurring reduction, if the records show one, offset the migration effort rather than concealing the trade-off inside a single total.
Migration planning is real work, but not a known price
Dynatrace’s Logs Advisory Consultation datasheet describes a remote engagement lasting 4–6 calendar weeks. Its listed scope includes inventorying log sources, volumes, and use cases; analyzing dashboards, alerts, and data models; educating teams about ingestion and queries; mapping use cases; planning ingestion and architecture; and advising on retention, cost optimization, query design, and alerting. The datasheet is dated 2022-07-26, states no price, and does not establish that this organization used the service. Confirm current scope and availability before treating it as a current offer: Logs Advisory Consultation datasheet.
What another team should replace with its own numbers
There is no published, independently established Datadog-to-Dynatrace migration-cost benchmark in the reviewed sources that can stand in for a particular workload. Before estimating your own move, gather:
- Actual contract rates and invoices, not only public list pricing.
- Daily or monthly source log GiB and Datadog ingested and indexed volumes.
- Dynatrace processed GiB, retained GiB-days, and GiB scanned by queries.
- Retention settings, included-query configuration, and platform commitment drawdown.
- Cutover dates and the length and cost of parallel operation.
- Migration and consulting hours, broken down by role, with labor-rate assumptions.
- Any changes to parsing, enrichment, dashboards, alerts, access controls, and workload volume.
Compare equivalent production windows, then explain any significant usage changes. The public pricing pages describe billing mechanics; only the organization’s own commercial and operational records can establish what it paid.
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