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Elastic Cloud Pricing vs. Micromegas

Elastic Cloud Serverless bills per GB ingested (volume-tiered) and per GB-month retained, with no per-user fees. On the reference workload the estimate is ~$6,200–$10,400/month for logs and metrics, about 5.6×–9.4× the Micromegas figure. The with-traces figure adds the reference span volume at the most favourable ingest rate, $0.09/GB, plus $0.019/GB-month retained, and comes to ~$52,600–$56,800/month, about 48×–52×. This page uses the shared reference workload and methodology; see The Challenge of Traces for how traces are priced.

Rates verified October 2026. Estimates, not quotes — confirm current rates at elastic.co/pricing.

Elastic pricing on the reference workload

There is no single headline figure, because Elastic does not publish its log-ingest tier breakpoints. The estimate is a range, from the $0.09/GB floor to the $0.60/GB first-tier rate.

  • Logs (Observability Complete):

    • Ingest is volume-tiered, "as low as $0.09/GB", and the tier breakpoints are not published: 8,261 GB × $0.09–$0.60/GB = $744–$4,957/month.
    • Retention: 8,261 GB × 3 months × $0.019/GB-month = ~$471/month

  • Metrics (time-series metrics at 25% of the standard rate, effective July 1, 2026):

    • Ingest: 129,980 GB × $0.023/GB = ~$2,990/month
    • Retention: 129,980 GB × 3 months × $0.005/GB-month = ~$1,950/month

  • Total Estimated Monthly Cost: ~$6,154–$10,367/month, or ~$6,200–$10,400

Elastic bills ingest and retention on "the fully enriched normalized data size … before Elasticsearch compression", which is why this estimate uses the measured billing sizes rather than raw payload sizes.

With traces: ~$52,600–$56,800/month. The span volume is ~315,837 GB per month, priced at the $0.09/GB floor, the most favourable rate at this volume.

  • Span ingest: 315,837 GB × $0.09/GB = ~$28,425/month
  • Span retention: 315,837 GB × 3 months × $0.019/GB-month = ~$18,003/month
  • Traces subtotal: ~$46,428/month, for a total of ~$52,582–$56,795/month

What's included and what's billed separately

  • Included: no per-user fees. The first 50 GB of egress each month is free.
  • Billed separately: egress beyond 50 GB at $0.05/GB, and traces (priced in the with-traces figure above, not in the logs-and-metrics estimate).
  • Cheaper tier: Logs Essentials has ingest as low as $0.07/GB and retention as low as $0.017/GB-month, with reduced features compared with Observability Complete.
  • Retention: priced per GB-month stored, as above.

Cost comparison

Category Micromegas Elastic Cloud (Serverless)
Logs + metrics ~$1,100/month (includes all traces) ~$6,200–$10,400/month
With traces ~$1,100/month ~$52,600–$56,800/month
Ratio 1× ~5.6×–9.4× / ~48×–52×

Qualitative differences

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Control & Data Ownership: Micromegas provides full data ownership within your own cloud account, simplifying data governance.

Sources

Elastic Serverless Observability Pricing, Elastic Cloud Serverless pricing and packaging, Elastic Observability billing dimensions. Back to all SaaS vendor comparisons.