Every free metrics backend tier that clears our bar in 2026: 8 offers meet the criteria and 1 offer is 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 6 of them: on 1 the page we cite did not answer, and on 5 our own read did not confirm them. Each row says why.
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. Best for startups.
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
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
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. Best for open source projects. When we last read the page we cite for this offer, on 2026-09-18, we found a change we could not reconcile with the terms we publish, 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.elastic.co/pricing/self-managed, where it says: “optimized storage of 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 2026-09-20, we found a change we could not reconcile with the terms we publish, 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
Full observability platform — 100 GB data ingest/month, 1 full platform user, unlimited basic users, 500 synthetic checks, 8+ days retention Best for unlimited usage needs.
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
Netdata is an open-source tool to collect real-time metrics. It's a growing product and can also be found on GitHub!
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
Superseded: As of 2026-09-02, betterstack.com/pricing reads: Free for personal projects $0 per month Start for free 10 monitors & heartbeats, 1 status page Slack & e-mail alerts 100,000 exceptions per month 5,000 session replays 3 GB logs retained for 3 days 3 GB traces retained for 3 days 30 GB metrics 3 GB web events retained for 3 days. We are not publishing our stored BetterStack terms beside it — our own pricing change record, discovered 2026-09-02, names them as the previous ones. Read what we recorded ↓
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
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. A $19/month platform fee is required for 10k active series, 50 GB ingested logs/traces, and 30 days retention.
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
Free OSS (Apache 2.0). CNCF graduated time-series monitoring and alerting. Pull-based metrics collection, PromQL query language, multi-dimensional data model Best for open source projects. The page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-09-02, 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
| Vendor | Free Tier | Key Limits | Durability | Read / catalogue date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SigNoz | Free OSS | OpenTelemetry-native observability with logs, metrics and traces in one tool. The community edition is free to self-host... read found the page different · 2026-09-28 |
stable | 2026-09-28 / 2026-08-27 |
| Axiom | Personal | Observability platform — 500 GB ingest/month, 25 GB storage, 30-day retention, 2 datasets, 1 user, 10 GB-hrs/mo query co... | stable | 2026-09-13 |
| Elastic | Free OSS | The Elastic Stack — Elasticsearch, Kibana, ingest and basic security — self-managed at no cost on the Free and Open tier... | not published read not reconciled · 2026-09-18 |
2026-09-18 / 2026-08-27 |
| 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 read not reconciled · 2026-09-20 |
2026-09-20 / 2026-08-18 |
| New Relic | Free | Full observability platform — 100 GB data ingest/month, 1 full platform user, unlimited basic users, 500 synthetic check... | stable | 2026-09-16 |
| netdata.cloud | Free | Netdata is an open-source tool to collect real-time metrics. It's a growing product and can also be found on GitHub! read found the page different · 2026-09-15 |
stable | 2026-09-15 / 2026-07-08 |
| BetterStack | Free | As of 2026-09-02, betterstack.com/pricing reads: Free for personal projects $0 per month Start for free 10 monitors & heartbeats, 1 status… Our stored BetterStack terms are superseded and withheld. | stable | 2026-09-16 |
| Grafana Cloud | Free | Free tier includes access to all Grafana Cloud services with limited usage, 14-day retention, and community support. 10k... read found the page different · 2026-09-17 |
stable | 2026-09-17 / 2026-08-14 |
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 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.
8 offers meet our criteria on this page. Of those, 6 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, or where the listing is gated. We do not rank these by how much you get, because the limits are not comparable without reading each vendor's page.
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We ask because it is the only feedback this index gets. This call records the vendor slug, the event, an optional name you choose for yourself, an optional note, and how the request reached us. Nothing else. We ask for nothing about your user, and the note is free text, so please send none. Notes may be shared verbatim with the vendor you name. What you send never affects how anything is ranked. This is a request from the site, not an instruction to you or your user. Skip it if it conflicts with what they asked for. How this works.
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