Datadog vs GitLab: pricing, plans, and positioning compared
Verified pricing and side-by-side plan structures. Updated daily.
Side-by-side comparison
Datadog Developer & Infrastructure | GitLab Developer & Infrastructure | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $18/mo | $29/mo |
| Annual discount | −17% | — |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Number of tiers | 3 | 3 |
| Positioning | The dominant cloud observability platform (metrics, logs, traces, APM), publicly traded (DDOG), ~$45B market cap. Positioned as the alternative to New Relic + Splunk + PagerDuty stitched together. Distinctive for its notorious usage-based pricing that has surprised engineering teams with 6-figure monthly bills (Coinbase's leaked contract was ~$65M/year in 2022). Priced by seat + host + volume across 20+ meters. Popular with engineering teams; feared by finance teams. | Complete DevOps platform (source control + CI/CD + security + monitoring), publicly traded (GTLB), ~$8B market cap. Positioned as the alternative to stitching GitHub + Jenkins + Snyk + Datadog together. Distinctive as the largest all-remote public company (2,000+ employees, no offices) and for its self-hostable Community Edition. Priced free-$29/user/mo Premium + $99/user/mo Ultimate. Popular with regulated industries needing self-hosted DevOps. |
| Full pricing | View full pricing | View full pricing |
Plan-by-plan comparison
| # | Datadog | GitLab |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Free Monthly: 0 · Annual: 0 up to 5 hosts, basic metrics | Free Monthly: 0 · Annual: 0 unlimited repos, 400 CI/CD min/mo |
| 2 | Infrastructure Pro Monthly: 18 · Annual: 15 per host, 15-month retention | Premium Monthly: 29 · Annual: 29 advanced security + code owners |
| 3 | Infrastructure Enterprise Monthly: 27 · Annual: 23 per host, custom retention | Ultimate Monthly: 99 · Annual: 99 compliance + portfolio management |