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Fix heading styles, add H1s to comparison pages, add Compare footer and blog cross-links
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blog/2025-08-12-observability-theatre/index.md

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- [Why Unified Observability Matters](/blog/unified-observability/)
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- [Reducing Bus Factor in Observability](/blog/reducing-bus-factor-in-observability/)
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- [Observability Cost Optimization: Beyond Volume Discounts](/observability-cost-optimization/)

blog/2025-08-18-unified-observability/index.md

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_Thanks for reading. If you're in the process of evaluating or implementing
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unified observability for your team, I'd love to hear about your experience. The
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patterns I've described are common, but every team's journey is unique._
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## Related reading
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- [Observability Cost Optimization: Beyond Volume Discounts](/observability-cost-optimization/)

blog/2025-11-03-factors-influencing-mttr/index.md

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* [Effective War Room Management](/blog/effective-warroom-management/)
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* [Making Certificate Expiry Boring](/blog/make-certificate-expiry-boring/)
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* [The Datadog Alternative That Doesn't Charge Per Host](/datadog-alternative/)

blog/2026-01-28-multi-cloud-design/index.md

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Applying vendor-neutral principles to your monitoring stack
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* [Observability Theatre][theatre]
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The cost of fragmented tooling and how to escape it
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* [CloudWatch Alternative][cloudwatch]
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Why multi-cloud teams outgrow CloudWatch
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[cloudwatch]: /cloudwatch-alternative/
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[foundation]: /blog/cloud-native-foundation-layer
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[unified]: /blog/unified-observability

blog/2026-02-13-production-ready-otel-collector/index.md

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Need help hardening your collector setup?
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[Book a 15-minute demo](https://base14.io/contact), no setup required.
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## Related reading
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- [The Datadog Alternative That Doesn't Charge Per Host](/datadog-alternative/)
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- [New Relic Alternative: Unlimited Users, Signal-Based Pricing](/new-relic-alternative/)
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- [CloudWatch Alternative: Unified Observability Beyond AWS](/cloudwatch-alternative/)

docusaurus.config.ts

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@@ -338,6 +338,27 @@ const config: Config = {
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},
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],
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},
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{
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title: "Compare",
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items: [
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{
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label: "Datadog Alternative",
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to: "/datadog-alternative/",
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},
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{
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label: "New Relic Alternative",
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to: "/new-relic-alternative/",
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},
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{
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label: "CloudWatch Alternative",
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to: "/cloudwatch-alternative/",
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},
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{
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label: "Cost Optimization Guide",
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to: "/observability-cost-optimization/",
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},
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],
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},
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],
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copyright: `Copyright © ${new Date().getFullYear()} base14, Inc. All rights reserved.`,
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},

src/css/custom.css

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======================================== */
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--ifm-font-family-base: "Inter", system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, sans-serif;
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--ifm-heading-font-family: "Lora", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;
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--ifm-h1-font-size: 1.5rem;
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--ifm-h2-font-size: 1rem;
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--ifm-h1-font-size: 2.25rem;
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--ifm-h2-font-size: 1.75rem;
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--ifm-h3-font-size: 1.25rem;
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/* ========================================
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Light Mode Colors - Base14 Design System
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font-size: 14px;
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}
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/* Docs heading sizes and font */
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/* Docs and standalone page heading sizes and font */
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.theme-doc-markdown h1,
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.mdx-page .main-wrapper h1,
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html:not(.blog-wrapper) h1[class*="title"] {
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font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, sans-serif;
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font-size: 36px;
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line-height: 1.2;
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letter-spacing: -0.01em;
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}
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.theme-doc-markdown h2 {
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.theme-doc-markdown h2,
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.mdx-page .main-wrapper h2 {
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font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, sans-serif;
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font-size: 28px;
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line-height: 1.3;
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margin-top: 2.25rem;
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}
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.theme-doc-markdown h3 {
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.theme-doc-markdown h3,
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.mdx-page .main-wrapper h3 {
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font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, sans-serif;
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font-size: 20px;
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line-height: 1.4;
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.theme-doc-markdown h4,
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.theme-doc-markdown h5,
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.theme-doc-markdown h6 {
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.theme-doc-markdown h6,
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.mdx-page .main-wrapper h4,
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.mdx-page .main-wrapper h5,
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.mdx-page .main-wrapper h6 {
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font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, sans-serif;
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}
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src/pages/cloudwatch-alternative.mdx

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src/pages/datadog-alternative.mdx

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description: "Compare Datadog vs base14 Scout with real pricing math for 100 K8s hosts. Signal-based pricing, zero sampling, OTel-native. No per-host fees."
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---
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import Head from '@docusaurus/Head';
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import Head from "@docusaurus/Head";
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<Head>
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<meta name="keywords" content="datadog alternative, datadog replacement, cheaper than datadog, switch from datadog to opentelemetry, datadog cost reduction" />
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<script type="application/ld+json">{JSON.stringify({"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How long does migration from Datadog take?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"4-6 weeks for a typical mid-size team. base14's onboarding team handles the heavy lifting during the first month (free)."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Can I run base14 and Datadog in parallel?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Yes. OTel Collectors support multiple exporters. Run both platforms simultaneously until your team is confident in Scout."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What about Datadog's 600+ integrations?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Most modern infrastructure and application frameworks support OpenTelemetry natively. For services that don't, the OTel Collector has receivers for common data sources."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Is base14 enterprise-ready?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Yes. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 compliant. BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) deployment available on AWS, GCP, and Azure. Data residency options included."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How does Scout pricing work?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"You pay a $250/month platform fee plus usage: $0.10 per million metrics and $0.25 per million logs and traces. No throttling, no sampling, no surprise tier changes. The pricing is linear and predictable."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Does Scout support alerting and dashboards?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Yes. Custom dashboards, alerting rules, and SLO tracking are included for all customers. No feature gating based on plan tier."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What is the best Datadog alternative for mid-size teams?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"base14 Scout is built for mid-size engineering teams (50-200 engineers) who need full observability without per-host pricing. Signal-based pricing keeps costs predictable as you scale."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How much cheaper is base14 Scout than Datadog?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"For a 100-host Kubernetes team with 430GB/day of logs, 7.5B metrics, and 7.5B trace spans/month, Scout costs ~$5,375/month. Datadog's published list pricing with full indexing comes to ~$36,270/month. Most teams index less to control costs, but that means less data available during incidents."}}]})}</script>
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<meta
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name="keywords"
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content="datadog alternative, datadog replacement, cheaper than datadog, switch from datadog to opentelemetry, datadog cost reduction"
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/>
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<script type="application/ld+json">
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{JSON.stringify({
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"@context": "https://schema.org",
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"@type": "FAQPage",
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mainEntity: [
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{
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"@type": "Question",
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name: "How long does migration from Datadog take?",
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acceptedAnswer: {
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"@type": "Answer",
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text: "4-6 weeks for a typical mid-size team. base14's onboarding team handles the heavy lifting during the first month (free).",
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},
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},
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{
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"@type": "Question",
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name: "Can I run base14 and Datadog in parallel?",
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acceptedAnswer: {
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"@type": "Answer",
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text: "Yes. OTel Collectors support multiple exporters. Run both platforms simultaneously until your team is confident in Scout.",
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},
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},
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{
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"@type": "Question",
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name: "What about Datadog's 600+ integrations?",
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acceptedAnswer: {
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"@type": "Answer",
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text: "Most modern infrastructure and application frameworks support OpenTelemetry natively. For services that don't, the OTel Collector has receivers for common data sources.",
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},
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},
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{
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"@type": "Question",
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name: "Is base14 enterprise-ready?",
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acceptedAnswer: {
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"@type": "Answer",
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text: "Yes. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 compliant. BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) deployment available on AWS, GCP, and Azure. Data residency options included.",
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},
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},
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{
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"@type": "Question",
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name: "How does Scout pricing work?",
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acceptedAnswer: {
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"@type": "Answer",
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text: "You pay a $250/month platform fee plus usage: $0.10 per million metrics and $0.25 per million logs and traces. No throttling, no sampling, no surprise tier changes. The pricing is linear and predictable.",
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},
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},
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{
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"@type": "Question",
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name: "Does Scout support alerting and dashboards?",
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acceptedAnswer: {
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"@type": "Answer",
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text: "Yes. Custom dashboards, alerting rules, and SLO tracking are included for all customers. No feature gating based on plan tier.",
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},
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},
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{
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"@type": "Question",
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name: "What is the best Datadog alternative for mid-size teams?",
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acceptedAnswer: {
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"@type": "Answer",
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text: "base14 Scout is built for mid-size engineering teams (50-200 engineers) who need full observability without per-host pricing. Signal-based pricing keeps costs predictable as you scale.",
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},
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},
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{
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"@type": "Question",
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name: "How much cheaper is base14 Scout than Datadog?",
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acceptedAnswer: {
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"@type": "Answer",
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text: "For a 100-host Kubernetes team with 430GB/day of logs, 7.5B metrics, and 7.5B trace spans/month, Scout costs ~$5,375/month. Datadog's published list pricing with full indexing comes to ~$36,270/month. Most teams index less to control costs, but that means less data available during incidents.",
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},
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},
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],
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})}
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</script>
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</Head>
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# The Datadog Alternative That Doesn't Charge Per Host
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> **TL;DR:** base14 Scout is an OpenTelemetry-native observability
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> platform with signal-based pricing ($250/month platform fee +
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> $0.10/M metrics + $0.25/M logs and traces). No per-host fees,
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Datadog's pricing has more moving parts than most teams realize.
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Here's how the bill compounds:
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| Component | Cost |
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| :--- | :--- |
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| Component | Cost |
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| :------------------------ | :------------------------------------------------------ |
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| Infrastructure monitoring | [$15-27/host/month](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/) |
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| APM | $31/host/month |
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| Log ingestion | $0.10/GB |
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| Log indexing | $1.70/million events (15-day retention) |
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| Custom metrics | $1/100 metrics/month (beyond included) |
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| Synthetics | $5-12/1000 test runs |
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| APM | $31/host/month |
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| Log ingestion | $0.10/GB |
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| Log indexing | $1.70/million events (15-day retention) |
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| Custom metrics | $1/100 metrics/month (beyond included) |
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| Synthetics | $5-12/1000 test runs |
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*Pricing as of March 2026. Published rates at
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_Pricing as of March 2026. Published rates at
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[datadoghq.com/pricing](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/),
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annual billing. Contract pricing varies, but the billing
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mechanics work the same way.*
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mechanics work the same way._
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The total cost of logging runs approximately $1.41/GB when you
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account for both ingestion and indexing, assuming roughly 770K
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When a mid-stage fintech team hit 80 hosts and 300GB of daily
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logs, their Datadog bill crossed $18,000/month against a budget
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of $8,000. The gap wasn't caused by growth it was caused by
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of $8,000. The gap wasn't caused by growth - it was caused by
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billing mechanics they hadn't modeled, with dual-cost logging on
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300GB/day responsible for the bulk of the overage.
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## Side-by-side: Datadog vs base14 Scout
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| Factor | Datadog | base14 Scout |
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| :--- | :--- | :--- |
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| Pricing model | GB + per-host + per-metric | Signal-based ($0.10/M metrics, $0.25/M logs & traces) |
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| Base cost | Varies widely | $250/month platform fee |
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| Per-seat pricing | Only for On-Call/Incident add-ons | No |
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| Default retention | 15 days | 30 days (extended retention available) |
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| Sampling | Aggressive at scale | Zero |
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| Custom metrics | $1/100 extra | Included |
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| LLM observability | Add-on | Native |
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| Support | Tiered tickets | SRE partnership |
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| Lock-in | Proprietary agents | OpenTelemetry-native |
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| Factor | Datadog | base14 Scout |
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| :---------------- | :-------------------------------- | :---------------------------------------------------- |
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| Pricing model | GB + per-host + per-metric | Signal-based ($0.10/M metrics, $0.25/M logs & traces) |
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| Base cost | Varies widely | $250/month platform fee |
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| Per-seat pricing | Only for On-Call/Incident add-ons | No |
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| Default retention | 15 days | 30 days (extended retention available) |
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| Sampling | Aggressive at scale | Zero |
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| Custom metrics | $1/100 extra | Included |
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| LLM observability | Add-on | Native |
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| Support | Tiered tickets | SRE partnership |
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| Lock-in | Proprietary agents | OpenTelemetry-native |
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Numbers tell part of the story. Here's why each difference matters
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when you're actually debugging at midnight.
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### Datadog estimate
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| Line item | Calculation | Monthly cost |
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| :--- | :--- | :--- |
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| Infrastructure (Enterprise) | 100 hosts × $23/host | $2,300 |
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| APM (base) | 100 hosts × $31/host | $3,100 |
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| APM indexed span overage | (7,500M - 100M included) × $1.70/M | $12,580 |
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| Log ingestion | 12,900 GB × $0.10 | $1,290 |
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| Log indexing (15-day) | 10,000M events × $1.70/M | $17,000 |
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| Custom metrics | Within included (100 × 200 = 20K) | $0 |
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| **Monthly total (full indexing)** | | **~$36,270** |
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| **Annual total** | | **~$435,240** |
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| Line item | Calculation | Monthly cost |
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| :-------------------------------- | :--------------------------------- | :------------ |
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| Infrastructure (Enterprise) | 100 hosts × $23/host | $2,300 |
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| APM (base) | 100 hosts × $31/host | $3,100 |
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| APM indexed span overage | (7,500M - 100M included) × $1.70/M | $12,580 |
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| Log ingestion | 12,900 GB × $0.10 | $1,290 |
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| Log indexing (15-day) | 10,000M events × $1.70/M | $17,000 |
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| Custom metrics | Within included (100 × 200 = 20K) | $0 |
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| **Monthly total (full indexing)** | | **~$36,270** |
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| **Annual total** | | **~$435,240** |
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Most teams index 20-30% of logs and a fraction of spans to control
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costs bringing this closer to ~$15,400/month, but making most
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costs - bringing this closer to ~$15,400/month, but making most
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data unsearchable during incidents.
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*Pricing as of March 2026. Published rates at
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_Pricing as of March 2026. Published rates at
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[datadoghq.com/pricing](https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/),
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annual billing. Negotiated discounts lower the total but don't
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change the billing structure.*
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change the billing structure._
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**How we calculated log events:** 430 GB/day ÷ 1.3 KB average
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(observed median across containerized workloads) = ~333M log
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- **Traces**: 7.5B trace spans/month
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| Line item | Calculation | Monthly cost |
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| :--- | :--- | :--- |
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| Platform fee | Flat rate | $250 |
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| Metrics | 7,500M × $0.10/M | $750 |
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| Logs | 10,000M × $0.25/M | $2,500 |
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| Traces | 7,500M × $0.25/M | $1,875 |
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| 30-day retention | Included | $0 |
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| LLM observability | Included | $0 |
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| SRE partnership | Included | $0 |
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| **Monthly total** | | **~$5,375** |
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| **Annual total** | | **~$64,500** |
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| Line item | Calculation | Monthly cost |
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| :---------------- | :---------------- | :----------- |
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| Platform fee | Flat rate | $250 |
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| Metrics | 7,500M × $0.10/M | $750 |
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| Logs | 10,000M × $0.25/M | $2,500 |
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| Traces | 7,500M × $0.25/M | $1,875 |
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| 30-day retention | Included | $0 |
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| LLM observability | Included | $0 |
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| SRE partnership | Included | $0 |
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| **Monthly total** | | **~$5,375** |
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| **Annual total** | | **~$64,500** |
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No egress fees. No infrastructure to run. No feature add-ons.
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No per-seat charges at any team size.
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That's transparent math you can verify. No per-host multipliers
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and no dual-cost logging. Your negotiated Datadog rate may be
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lower than list the structural difference stays: Scout charges
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lower than list - the structural difference stays: Scout charges
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per signal, Datadog layers host fees, ingestion fees, and
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Multiply by 30 for monthly signals.
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- **Traces**: Your indexed span count in Datadog maps 1:1 to Scout
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trace signals. Check APM > Usage in the Datadog console.
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- **Metrics**: On Scout, all metric data points are signals
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- **Metrics**: On Scout, all metric data points are signals -
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including infrastructure metrics that Datadog bundles into host
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fees. Estimate your time series count (host metrics + K8s
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metrics + app metrics) and multiply by data points per month

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