Cost Comparison: Micromegas vs. Elastic Observability¶
Disclaimer: These are estimates, not quotes. Actual costs vary based on usage patterns, cloud provider, region, and volume tiers.
For shared methodology, workload definition, and Micromegas baseline cost, see the Comparison Methodology page.
Elastic Cloud Pricing (Serverless Model)¶
Elastic Cloud Serverless reached GA in December 2024, and pricing was updated in November 2025. The serverless model replaces the older resource-based pricing (RAM + storage) and is now Elastic's primary offering for new customers.
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Observability Complete Ingest:
- Volume-tiered pricing ranging from ~$0.60/GB (first 50 GB) down to ~$0.09/GB at high volume
- At 10+ TB/month, the blended rate is approximately ~$0.15/GB
10,700 GB/month × ~$0.15/GB- Subtotal: ~$1,605/month
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Retention (90 days):
10,700 GB × 3 months × $0.019/GB-month- Subtotal: ~$610/month
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Total Estimated Monthly Cost: ~$2,215/month
Note: The exact volume tiers for Observability ingest are not fully published — Elastic's pricing calculator provides the full breakdown. The ~$0.15/GB blended rate is approximate for this workload.
Cost Comparison Summary¶
| Category | Micromegas | Elastic Cloud (Serverless) |
|---|---|---|
| Platform/Infrastructure Cost | ~$1,100/month | ~$2,200/month |
| Ratio | 1× | ~2× more |
Qualitative Differences¶
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Architectural Philosophy:
- Elastic was built around the Lucene search index — exceptionally powerful for log search and text analysis. Metrics and traces support has been built on top of this foundation.
- Micromegas was designed from the ground up with a unified data model for logs, metrics, and traces. It uses columnar storage (Parquet) and a SQL query engine (DataFusion), which is inherently more efficient for analytical queries and data compression.
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Query Language:
- Elastic uses KQL (Kibana Query Language) and Lucene query syntax, powerful for text search but requiring domain-specific knowledge.
- Micromegas uses SQL, making it immediately accessible to a broader range of engineers, analysts, and data scientists.
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Serverless vs. Self-Hosted: Elastic Cloud Serverless removes the need to manage cluster sizing and scaling. Micromegas requires managing your own infrastructure but provides full cost transparency and control.
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Control & Data Ownership: Micromegas provides full data ownership within your own cloud account, simplifying data governance.