Comparison Subtrace vs Datadog APM

Full request visibility
without the per-host bill.

Datadog APM is genuinely powerful. It's also $15–$31/host/month before you account for custom metrics, log ingest, and the inevitable overage invoice. If you've ever opened a Datadog bill and felt a chill, this page is for you.

See your traffic in 60 seconds → See the pricing math
The math

A real workload, compared

Here's what 50 hosts actually costs on Datadog — and what the same workload costs on Subtrace.

Datadog APM List price — actual bills vary
Infrastructure Monitoring $15/host/mo
50 hosts × $15
APM Pro (traces + spans) $16/host/mo
50 hosts × $16
Custom Metrics $0.05/metric/hr
~200 custom metrics × $0.05 × 730hr
Log Management (ingest) $0.10/GB
~200GB/mo baseline
Custom Metrics estimate ~$180/mo
Estimated total ~$1,550/mo
Plus overages, agent costs, and annual contract requirements. See Datadog's public pricing →
Subtrace Team All-in price, no surprises
All features, all hosts $49/mo
Unlimited hosts, all APM features
Trace retention 30 days
Included, no upgrade needed
Anomaly detection Included
No extra tier
Slack + PagerDuty Included
No per-integration fee
All-in price $49/mo
No contract. No per-host fee. Cancel any time.
~$1,500 savings per month — that's $18,000/year — on the same trace coverage.
Feature comparison

What you actually get

No cherry-picking. Here's where Subtrace and Datadog APM actually differ.

Feature Subtrace Datadog APM
Pricing model Flat — $49/mo Per-host + consumption
Contract required No — self-serve Annual typically required
Setup time Minutes Days to weeks
Zero-code install ✓ eBPF-based ✗ Agent + config
Full request/response payload ✓ ✓
eBPF-based capture ✓ ✗ (agent-based)
Container-native ✓ ✓
Works outside Kubernetes ✓ VMs, bare metal, any cloud ✓
Agent footprint Near-zero (eBPF) Moderate — per-host agent
Time-to-first-trace ~60 seconds Hours to days
Log management depth ✗ Traces only ✓ Best-in-class
Broader integrations APM-focused ✓ 600+ integrations
Custom dashboards Core dashboards ✓ Advanced customization
Billing predictability High Low — overages common

When you should still use Datadog

We earn credibility by being honest about this.

Migration guide

Switching takes less time than you think

1

Instrument your first service — 60 seconds

Follow our quickstart guide. No agent install, no config file changes. Point your OpenTelemetry SDK at Subtrace and you're capturing traces within minutes.

2

Run both in parallel

Keep Datadog running while you validate Subtrace's coverage. Most teams run parallel for 1–2 weeks — enough to confirm that every service you'd trace in Datadog is visible in Subtrace. You control the cutover pace.

3

Point production traffic at Subtrace

When you're confident, flip the instrumentation target. Datadog APM is billed by host — you can stop the Datadog agent whenever you're ready. No migration window, no downtime, no ceremony.

Start the quickstart → Questions? Email hello@subtraceos.com
See it in action

Trace UI — no account needed

Our live demo shows 50 realistic backend traces with full request/response visibility, waterfall timing, and filtering. Take a look before you commit to anything.

Open the live trace explorer → 50 traces, waterfall view, live mode — no signup

See your own traffic in 60 seconds.

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