Honeycomb vs. Datadog
See why teams are making the switch from Datadog to Honeycomb, and decide if we’re the best choice for you.
Key differences
Accelerate debugging
Datadog splits log, trace, network, and RUM data into different views, separating analysis and slowing response times. Honeycomb unifies signals into detailed events, with a streamlined workflow for more effective debugging.
Control costs
In Datadog, fast analysis requires custom metrics and pre-indexing, which drives up costs. Honeycomb charges by event volume, not custom fields, giving you powerful analysis with predictable pricing.
Enterprise-grade alerts
Metric-based alerts in tools like Datadog lack underlying context and count along time intervals. Honeycomb’s event-based SLOs reflect user impact, helping gauge severity and meet customer expectations.
 |  |
|---|---|
| One single source of truth | |
Wide events unify context on a singular debugging workflow. | Logs, metrics, traces, network, and frontend signals stored and explored separately. |
| Real-time querying and pattern detection | |
Performs complex queries in real-time across all fields instantly, without prior selection of indices. | Requires custom metrics and pre-indexing to access and analyze context that matters. |
| Unrestricted analysis and parsing of highly specific values | |
Fast analysis with unlimited cardinality and high dimensionality. | Requires indexing high-cardinality fields for performance, which quickly drive high cost. |
| Faster debugging and anomaly analysis | |
Detects hidden outliers across any attributes with BubbleUp. | Detects metric spikes (that may be random noise) for indexed fields but does not offer comprehensive analysis of all fields within anomalous data. |
| Actionable alerts with SLOs | |
Raw event-based SLOs give teams insight into the underlying “why.” | Metric-based SLOs simply check a count with no context on severity. |
| Full compatibility with OpenTelemetry | |
All features built for OpenTelemetry. Own your instrumentation and avoid vendor lock-in. | Supports OpenTelemetry, but full feature availability requires locking in with their proprietary agent. |
| Long retention on debugging data | |
60 days of default retention for all real-time debugging data. | Indexed logs and traces default to less than 20 days. |
Migration made easy
Making the switch to Honeycomb is stress-free. In fact, we’ll be here to make it all as effortless, seamless, and painless as possible.
Docs
Read everything you need to know for getting started with Honeycomb.
Resources
Dive into our resources for help observing, debugging, and improving your systems.
Customer support
Our team of support engineers is on deck as your trusted partner in observability.
What our customers say
After years in engineering feeling like I was missing critical insights, with our switch to Honeycomb, suddenly, it’s like I have sight for the first time in my career.
Pawel Malon
Principal Software Engineer, Phorest
We rely on Honeycomb to provide the world-class scale and resilience LaunchDarkly customers expect.
Edith Harbaugh
Co-founder and CEO, LaunchDarkly
We’re able to bring a different mentality in the way we run and manage our production systems. We were able to really help our engineering teams and change the culture.
Rich Anakor
Chief Solutions Architect, Vanguard
People ask, ‘Where’s Honeycomb in the new architecture?’ The answer is it’s everywhere. It’s built in.
Nick Herring
Technical Director of Infrastructure, CCP Games
We have predictable pricing that lets us do away with the legacy approach of sampling logs to preserve budget. Honeycomb’s event-based pricing empowers us to see every request from every service that comes through.
Michael Garski
Director of Platform Engineering, Fender
