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Open source vs SaaS — side-by-side comparison

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DatadogSaaS

Cloud monitoring and observability platform for infrastructure, APM, and logs

GrafanaOpen Source

Open source observability platform for metrics, logs, and traces

Overview

DatadogGrafana
TypeSaaSOpen Source
Category----
Pricing$15/host/moFree (self-hosted)
Self-Hostable
LicenseProprietaryAGPL-3.0

GitHub Metrics

DatadogGrafana
Stars--73k
Forks--13.7k
Contributors--372
Open Issues--3.9k
Last Commit--Apr 2026
Latest Release----

Why Consider the Open Source Alternative?

Data ownership — Self-host your data and maintain full control over your information

No vendor lock-in — Avoid recurring subscription costs and switch freely

Customizable — Modify the source code to fit your exact needs

The SaaS-to-Self-Hosted Migration Guide (Free PDF)

Step-by-step: infrastructure setup, data migration, backups, and security for 15+ common SaaS replacements. Used by 300+ developers.

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