Netdata vs Datadog
Datadog charges per-host, plus metered ingest. Netdata is open source and self-hosted.
The short answer
Netdata gives you per-second metrics on your own boxes for the cost of the disk. Datadog gives you a data platform. If you mainly want to know why a server is unhappy, you do not need the platform.
Pick Netdata when
- You run your own servers and have no dedicated ops person.
- Your per-host bill is growing and you mostly look at CPU, memory, disk and containers.
- You want the agent installed and useful in one command.
Stay with Datadog when
- You need long-retention metrics, distributed tracing and log correlation in one place.
- Compliance requires audited retention you do not want to operate.
- Your on-call process is already built around the incumbent's alerting.
The migration cost nobody mentions
Dashboards and alert rules do not transfer. The bigger cost is retention: Netdata is generous with disk, and long history is where self-hosting stops being free.
We deliberately do not quote Datadog's prices — third-party pricing changes without notice and a stale number is worse than none. The pricing model is what determines whether self-hosting wins, and that is stated above. Check current pricing with the vendor.