Observability line items — quantified
AWS CloudWatch Pricing Calculator
Model log GB ingestion, retention storage, custom metrics, and alarms before observability becomes a top-5 AWS spend category. us-east-1 list pricing.
- No signup
- Instant results
- ~2 min
Read the full breakdown — Amazon CloudWatch Pricing covers billing dimensions, traps, and a 30-day cleanup plan.
Log volume profile
us-east-1list rates, pricing as of 2026-10-17. Logs ingest/storage, custom metrics, alarm types, Insights scan, optional OTLP + managed collector lines; optional free tier. Source: AWS public pricing.
us-east-1 rates (2026-10-17): $0.50/GB ingested, $0.03/GB-mo stored, $0.50/GB OTLP metrics when using managed collectors.
Cloud cost optimization ·Cloud cost rollup
CloudWatch Logs ingestion — application, VPC flow, and container logs.
Average GB stored during the month at $0.03/GB-mo.
Metrics, alarms & Insights
Custom metrics $0.30/metric-mo (first 10,000), then $0.10 (next 240,000); standard alarms $0.10/alarm; Logs Insights $0.005/GB scanned.
$0.30/metric for the first 10,000, $0.10 for the next 240,000.
GB scanned by Logs Insights queries — not the same as ingestion GB.
Managed Prometheus collectors (Jul 31, 2026): optional OTLP metric GB and collector-hour lines when scraping /metrics into CloudWatch. See thecollectors cost model for full destination math.
$0.50/GB uncompressed OTLP — 15 months storage included. AWS Example 22 shape ≈ 108 GB/mo.
Not modeled: PromQL API queries at $0.01 per million samples scanned (console and dashboard queries are free), and metric centralization at $0.05/GB for each copy after the first, which is free.
$0.04/collector-hour. One always-on scraper ≈ 744 hr/mo.
$0.03 per 10M samples collected — confirm on AMP pricing page.
When enabled below, storage GB is derived as ingest × days / 30.
Your Estimated CloudWatch Cost
Logs · metrics · alarms
Total Monthly Cost
live resultCost Breakdown
Retention and tier detail unlocks after email
Get the Full CloudWatch Breakdown
Line-item detail, log retention scenarios, and observability tips — emailed to you.
Full breakdown unlocked!
Detailed CloudWatch line items below.
Line Items
CloudWatch Cost Optimization Tips
- Log retention: Default forever retention inflates storage — set 7–30 day policies on noisy log groups.
- Ingestion filters: Drop debug logs at the agent before they hit CloudWatch Logs.
- Metric cardinality: High-cardinality custom metrics (per-tenant labels) explode the metrics line item.
- OTLP vs classic metrics: Managed collectors (Jul 2026) bill GB ingested, not per-series — model both paths before migrating scrape jobs.
- Insights queries: Narrow time ranges and filter early to cut GB scanned.
Want this applied to your real account?
FactualMinds observability FinOps reviews align log volume with SLOs — typical CloudWatch spend drops 20–45% after retention and sampling fixes.
Talk to FinOps Experts →Who This Tool Is For
SREs, platform engineers, and FinOps analysts who own CloudWatch Logs, Container Insights, or custom metric sprawl. When the Management & Governance line climbs without new services, logs and metrics are frequent culprits.
Why We Built This Tool
CloudWatch pricing spans ingestion, storage, custom metrics, alarms, query scan volume, and (since Jul 31, 2026) managed Prometheus collector-hours plus OTLP metric GB — each with different units. This calculator uses us-east-1 list pricing as of 2026-10-17 for the meters teams most often underestimate.
What Problem It Solves
- Log ingestion vs storage. Separate one-time ingest GB from retained GB-month storage.
- Custom metric count. Model the first-tier $0.30/metric rate explicitly.
- OTLP vs classic metrics. Optional managed-collector GB and collector-hour lines — see the July 2026 collectors post.
- Alarm inventory. Standard alarms at $0.10 each add up in microservices estates.
- Query cost. Logs Insights GB scanned is distinct from log ingestion.
See cloud cost optimization or the AWS Cloud Cost Calculator for account-wide rollups.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do these prices come from?
Amazon CloudWatch us-east-1 list prices as of 2026-10-17: $0.50/GB log ingestion, $0.03/GB-mo log storage, custom metrics $0.30 (first 10,000) / $0.10 (next 240,000) / $0.05 (next 750,000) / $0.02 (over 1M), $0.10/standard alarm, $0.005/GB Logs Insights scanned, $0.50/GB OTLP metric ingestion, $0.04/managed collector-hour. Confirm on the AWS CloudWatch and AMP pricing pages.
Are free tiers included?
Optionally — enable Apply free tier (5 GB ingest, 10 metrics, 10 standard alarms). Composite/anomaly alarms and OTLP/collector lines are not free-tier eligible in this model.
What about Container Insights or Lambda logs?
Lambda and container logs bill through the same CloudWatch Logs ingestion and storage meters — include their GB in your sliders. Container Insights metrics bill separately: with OpenTelemetry for EKS at $0.08/GB ingested, with enhanced observability for EKS at $0.21 per million observations (first 1B). Model those in the observability stack calculator.
What about Application Signals and CloudWatch Omni?
Application Signals has a 3-month free tier per account (100 GB ingested with transaction spans, 1M spans indexed, or 100M signals without spans), then $0.35/GB ingested or $1.50 per million signals for the first tiers. CloudWatch Omni (generally available September 2026) bills ingestion and storage at standard CloudWatch rates and charges for queries above an included allowance — see the CloudWatch Omni pricing page.
Do composite or anomaly alarms cost more?
Yes — choose Standard ($0.10), Anomaly ($0.30), or Composite ($0.50) under alarm type. Retention can also derive storage GB from ingest × days.
How do managed Prometheus collectors fit?
Since July 31, 2026, agentless scrapers can land metrics in CloudWatch via OTLP ($0.50/GB) plus collector-hour and samples-collected fees on the AMP CreateScraper surface. Use the OTLP and collector-hour sliders here, or the full cost CSV in the managed collectors blog post.
Higher custom metric tiers?
Modeled. Custom metrics cost $0.30 each for the first 10,000, $0.10 for the next 240,000, $0.05 for the next 750,000, and $0.02 above 1M per month.
How accurate is this estimate?
Arithmetic matches published rates for your inputs. Missing items include metric API charges, dashboards, Contributor Insights, X-Ray, VPC transfer between collector ENIs and targets, PromQL API query scans ($0.01 per million samples), and metric centralization copies ($0.05/GB).
