Datadog
Unified monitoring for infrastructure, applications, logs and security across cloud environments.
why this verdict
Keep paying — Microsoft has not replaced it
Microsoft's version overlaps, but does not finish the dev tools job, so this one still earns its $15/mo.
- A named launch, not a vibe named, unlinked
- Azure Monitor with Copilot-generated incident summaries bundled into the cloud bill. Microsoft, May 19, 2025 — no announcement link recorded yet.
- How much of the job it covers not the job editorial call
- Parts of it. The job still needs the tool to get finished.
- Is there a free way to do it? yes
- 3 of 3 listed replacements have a usable free tier: Grafana Cloud, New Relic and SigNoz.
- What the call is worth $180/yr
- $15/mo at the entry paid tier — $180 a year per seat.
- Threatened by
- Microsoft
- Since
- May 19, 2025
- List price
- $15/mo
- Per year
- $180
The backstory
Datadog collects metrics, traces, logs and security signals from hundreds of integrations and joins them in one place. Microsoft bundles increasingly capable monitoring and Copilot-written incident summaries into Azure, which pressures the analysis layer. The hard part was never the summary though, it is the agent fleet, the integration catalogue and the years of retained data teams query during an outage. Switching that out mid-quarter is not something a model makes easy.
Escape hatches
Open-source stack managed, with a usable free tier
grafana.com open_in_newFull-stack observability priced by data volume and users
newrelic.com open_in_newSelf-hostable OpenTelemetry-native alternative
signoz.io open_in_new3 of 3 replacements have a usable free tier.
