Every free metrics backend tier that clears our bar in 2026: 6 offers meet the criteria and 3 offers are demoted with a named reason. Our membership test: stores time-indexed measurements and serves queries over them; dashboards and alerting are built on top rather than sold as the product. We could not confirm today's terms for 5 of them: on 1 the page we cite did not answer, and on 4 our own read did not confirm them. Each row says why.
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 metrics_backend. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://betterstack.com/pricing, where it says: “Embedded charts & metrics”. How we use this
Always Free: all non-chargeable Google Cloud metrics, first 1M monitoring API calls/month. Dashboards, alerting, and uptime checks for GCP resources. When we last read the page we cite for this offer, on 2026-10-25, 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 metrics_backend. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/pricing, where it says: “Read API calls: $0.50/million time series returned”. 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 metrics_backend. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://www.elastic.co/pricing/self-managed, where it says: “optimized storage of metrics”. 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 metrics_backend. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://signoz.io/pricing/, where it says: “Metrics Explorer - search, query, and analyze all metrics”. 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 metrics_backend. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://axiom.co/pricing, where it says: “Metrics skill”. 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 metrics_backend. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://newrelic.com/pricing, where it says: “Our straightforward pricing is based on just two core metrics—users and data ingest OR compute and data ingest—making it easy to understand what you’re paying for.”. How we use this
Free OSS (Apache 2.0). CNCF graduated time-series monitoring and alerting. Pull-based metrics collection, PromQL query language, multi-dimensional data model. The page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-10, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it metrics_backend. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://prometheus.io/, where it says: “Instrument, collect, store, and query your metrics for alerting, dashboarding, and other use cases.”. How we use this
Netdata is an open-source tool to collect real-time metrics. It's a growing product and can also be found on GitHub! When we last read the page we cite for this offer, on 2026-10-24, we could read no amount, tier or rate on the page, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Listed in Monitoring, and on this page because we labelled it metrics_backend. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://www.netdata.cloud/, where it says: “Centralized metrics streaming and storage”. 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 metrics_backend. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://grafana.com/pricing/, where it says: “Fully-managed, highly-scalable metrics service in Grafana Cloud with built-in features to optimize cost.”. How we use this
| Vendor | Free Tier | Key Limits | Durability | Read / catalogue date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| Google Cloud Monitoring | Always Free | Always Free: all non-chargeable Google Cloud metrics, first 1M monitoring API calls/month. Dashboards, alerting, and upt... | not published change not established · 2026-10-25 |
2026-10-25 / 2026-08-18 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
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 6 free metrics backend 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.
6 offers meet our criteria on this page. Of those, 4 carry no recorded change to the terms we publish, and we publish no durability signal for 2. 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.