Every free log management tier that clears our bar in 2026: 8 offers meet the criteria and 3 offers are demoted with a named reason. Our membership test: ingests, stores and queries log lines; the line is the stored unit and retention is a priced dimension. We could not confirm today's terms for 3 of them, and on all 3 our own read did not confirm them. Each row says why.
Powerful server monitoring in a unified platform for metrics and logs, with no setup complexity. Free for one server.
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it log_management. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://simpleobservability.com, where it says: “Dashboard Configuration Metrics Logs”. How we use this
10 uptime monitors, 3 GB logs (3-day retention), 100K exceptions/mo, 5K session replays, 30 GB metrics, 1 status page, 1 responder
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it log_management. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://betterstack.com/pricing, where it says: “3 GB logs retained for 3 days”. How we use this
OpenTelemetry-native observability with logs, metrics and traces in one tool. The community edition is free to self-host. SigNoz Cloud starts at $49/month including $49 of usage credit, then $0.3/GB ingested for logs and traces (15-day retention) and $0.1 per million metric samples; eligible startups pay $19/month for the first 12 months.
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it log_management. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://signoz.io/pricing/, where it says: “Log Management”. How we use this
Full observability platform — 100 GB data ingest/month, 1 full platform user, unlimited basic users, 500 synthetic checks, 8+ days retention
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it log_management. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://newrelic.com/pricing, where it says: “Advanced logs obfuscation: Create and track rules directly in the log management UI and mask or hash sensitive log data.”. How we use this
Full-stack observability platform — free forever plan: 100 GB/month data (APM, logs, infrastructure, traces, RUM, synthetics, database, serverless), 1,000 RUM sessions/month, 20,000 synthetic checks/month, 14-day data retention, unlimited users
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it log_management. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://middleware.io/pricing/, where it says: “Data volume is the sum total of uncompressed logs, metrics, and traces.”. How we use this
The Elastic Stack — Elasticsearch, Kibana, ingest and basic security — self-managed at no cost on the Free and Open tier under the Elastic License and SSPL, with community support. Platinum (existing customers only) and Enterprise are custom-priced and add machine learning, cross-cluster replication, searchable snapshots and 24/7 support. Elastic Cloud Serverless and Hosted are billed separately by usage or resources. The page we cite for Elastic states in words that it is free, which confirms the price — the limits stated here come from our own record rather than from that page.
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it log_management. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://www.elastic.co/pricing/self-managed, where it says: “Observability APM, logging, and metrics via Kibana Discover and Dashboards”. How we use this
Application monitoring (APM, errors, logging) — Our free plan is perfect for startups, hobby, or side-projects 30K requests 1GB logging 5-day retention Note — effective between 2026-09-09 and 2026-09-26: The free plan now offers 30,000 requests/month instead of 50,000. Source ↗
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it log_management. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://www.appsignal.com/plans, where it says: “Long-term log storage Automatically export and store logs from AppSignal to your S3-compatible storage for long-term retention.”. How we use this
Observability platform — 500 GB ingest/month, 25 GB storage, 30-day retention, 2 datasets, 1 user, 10 GB-hrs/mo query compute, 256 fields/dataset, 3 monitors, Email/Discord notifiers only. When we last read the page we cite for this offer, on 2026-11-12, we found the same terms as an earlier read we had declined to record, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it log_management. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://axiom.co/pricing, where it says: “Log management”. How we use this
Free tier includes access to all Grafana Cloud services with limited usage, 14-day retention, and community support. 10k metric series, 50 GB logs, and 50 GB traces are included. Pro costs $19 a month plus usage, includes 10k active series and 50 GB each of logs and traces, and bills usage above them. Pro keeps metrics for 13 months and logs, traces, profiles and k6 tests for 30 days.
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it log_management. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://grafana.com/pricing/, where it says: “Fully-managed log aggregation system powered by Grafana Loki.”. How we use this
Developer tier: 1 user, 5K errors/month, 5M spans/month, 50 session replays, 5GB application logs, 1GB attachments
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it log_management. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://sentry.io/pricing/, where it says: “Logs 5GB 5GB +$0.50/GB additional”. How we use this
Observability platform — Logs: 500 MB/day ingestion, 7-day retention. Monitoring: 3 hosts, 3 containers/host, 30-min data retention, 1 alert rule. Volume-based pricing, no per-host charges on paid plans
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it log_management. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://sematext.com/pricing, where it says: “Sematext is a fully managed log management solution, with built-in replication,”. How we use this
| Vendor | Free Tier | Key Limits | Durability | Read / catalogue date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simple Observability | Free | Powerful server monitoring in a unified platform for metrics and logs, with no setup complexity. Free for one server. | stable | 2026-11-08 |
| BetterStack | Free | 10 uptime monitors, 3 GB logs (3-day retention), 100K exceptions/mo, 5K session replays, 30 GB metrics, 1 status page, 1... | stable | 2026-10-30 |
| SigNoz | Free OSS | OpenTelemetry-native observability with logs, metrics and traces in one tool. The community edition is free to self-host... | stable | 2026-11-13 |
| New Relic | Free | Full observability platform — 100 GB data ingest/month, 1 full platform user, unlimited basic users, 500 synthetic check... | stable | 2026-10-24 |
| Middleware.io | Free | Full-stack observability platform — free forever plan: 100 GB/month data (APM, logs, infrastructure, traces, RUM, synthe... | watch effective 2026-05-03 |
2026-10-26 |
| Elastic | Free OSS | The Elastic Stack — Elasticsearch, Kibana, ingest and basic security — self-managed at no cost on the Free and Open tier... not confirmed · page states a free price · 2026-11-05 | stable | 2026-11-05 |
| AppSignal | Free | Application monitoring (APM, errors, logging) — Our free plan is perfect for startups, hobby, or side-projects 30K reque... | watch effective between 2026-09-09 and 2026-09-26 |
2026-11-10 |
| Axiom | Personal | Observability platform — 500 GB ingest/month, 25 GB storage, 30-day retention, 2 datasets, 1 user, 10 GB-hrs/mo query co... | not published change not established · 2026-11-12 |
2026-11-12 / 2026-10-22 |
We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 8 free log management offers that clear our bar, each listed with the terms we publish and the date we last read them. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.
8 offers meet our criteria on this page. Of those, 5 carry no recorded change to the terms we publish, 2 a recorded narrowing, and we publish no durability signal for 1. The Durability column below says which offer is in which group, and links the dated record behind every change. We withhold the class where the pricing page does not resolve or states no amount, tier or rate we can read, where we refused the last read, where the listing is gated, or where a narrowing in our records cites no source or no archived copy of the vendor's page has confirmed it. We do not rank these by how much you get, because the limits are not comparable without reading each vendor's page.