Estimating log costs (ingestion and retention)

Most log platforms charge for ingestion (GB ingested) and for retention (stored data). If your bill surprised you, it’s usually because volume or retention drifted upward.

1) Separate ingestion from storage

• Ingestion: GB/day × price per GB.
• Retention storage: roughly GB/day × retention days (steady state) × $/GB-month.

2) Use a steady-state model for retention

After you’ve been logging longer than your retention window, the dataset size is roughly constant: the last N days. That’s why “GB/day × retention days” is a useful planning estimate.

3) The knobs that usually matter most

• Drop or sample high-volume debug logs.
• Shorten hot retention; archive cold data to object storage.
• Index selectively (store everything, index what you query).

Tools

• Log ingestion cost calculator
• Log retention storage cost calculator