Skip to main content
Comparison

Logfire vs Elastic

Elastic Cloud Hosted and Logfire both accept OpenTelemetry. The differences are the Python instrumentation path, operational model, pricing unit, and whether AI evals are part of production observability. In our 30-day snapshot, elastic-apm represented about PyPI, last 30 days to 20 Aug 2026: elastic-apm 1,755,568 downloads against elastic-opentelemetry 85,875. Package downloads are not customer share. of downloads across Elastic's two Python instrumentation packages.

Try Logfire free

Trusted by teams building production software and AI

Feature comparison

Quick comparison

Logfire and Elastic compared feature by feature
Feature Logfire Elastic
OpenTelemetry Native, no vendor-specific agent EDOT (their OTel distribution), or the Elastic-specific agent most installs still use
What you size No observability deployment; usage scales with records A hosted deployment: hardware profile, node capacity, zones, and scaling policy
Query interface SQL (PostgreSQL syntax) ES|QL, plus KQL and Query DSL
Pricing unit Personal: 10M records free; Team: $49/month + $2/M over 10M Deployment capacity in RAM-hours, plus transfer, snapshots, synthetics, and inference
Published entry configuration Team: $49/month with 10M records included Standard: $99/month for 120 GB storage across two zones
Evals & datasets Datasets, code and LLM-judge scorers, experiments, human annotation, live evals LLM tracing via OpenTelemetry; no evaluation workflow
Breadth Observability, focused Observability plus search and security on one platform
Key differences

What is actually different

Open source and portable are not the same thing

Elastic's APM page says “APM should be open. Period.” and backs it with OpenTelemetry semantic conventions, W3C trace context and EDOT, their own supported OTel distribution. On licensing and direction they are right. The remaining portability risk is the instrumentation an application starts with. In the 30-day PyPI snapshot behind this page, elastic-apm accounted for about 95% of downloads across elastic-apm and elastic-opentelemetry. Package downloads are not customer share, but they show that the Elastic-specific agent remains heavily downloaded and carries no deprecation notice. It is BSD-licensed and readable, but it speaks Elastic's intake protocol rather than OTLP. Elastic's migration guides show what leaving costs: for Java it is a JVM flag swap with no code changes, while custom Agent API spans must be ported to OpenTelemetry. Start on OpenTelemetry and there is no instrumentation migration to schedule.

Hosted does not mean configuration-free

Elastic runs the underlying cloud service, but Cloud Hosted still asks you to choose a hardware profile, node capacity, availability zones, scaling behavior, and when to upgrade. Logfire does not expose an observability deployment to size: send records and the service scales behind the usage meter.

Capacity pricing or record pricing

Elastic Cloud Hosted prices node capacity in RAM-hours, with CPU and disk coupled to RAM, then adds resource dimensions such as data transfer and snapshots. Its published $99 Standard figure is tied to a 120 GB, two-zone reference configuration—not a telemetry allowance. Logfire bills records instead: Personal includes 10 million a month, while Team is $49 with the same allowance and $2 per million beyond it. The disclosure below preserves those different units rather than manufacturing a workload conversion.

Tracing an LLM is not evaluating one

Elastic covers LLM tracing through OpenTelemetry instrumentation, including LangChain, LangTrace, OpenLIT and OpenLLMetry, so the spans arrive and you can see what your model did. What is missing is the other half: datasets, scorers, experiments, human annotation. Tracing answers “what happened”; evals answer “was it any good”. If you are shipping AI features, changing a prompt without the second one is changing it and hoping.

Decision guide

Which should you choose?

Choose Logfire if

  • You want usage to scale without sizing an observability deployment
  • Your product has AI in it and you need evals, not just LLM traces
  • You would rather write SQL than ES|QL, KQL and Query DSL
  • You want a record meter instead of RAM-hours and deployment dimensions
  • You want to be sending useful traces this afternoon

Choose Elastic if

  • Your organization is already standardized on Elastic
  • You specifically want search, security, and observability consolidated with one vendor
  • You want direct control over deployment profiles, capacity, and upgrade timing
  • You need an Elastic-specific integration or workflow
Try it on your stack

See Logfire on your own telemetry

Start free with 10 million spans, logs, and metrics each month. No credit card required.

Start free Book a demo
Pricing

The entry price is a deployment configuration

Elastic Cloud Hosted pricing using its published 120 GB, two-zone reference configuration
Published pricing dimension Logfire Elastic
Published entry configuration Team: $49/month with 10M records included Standard: $99/month for the 120 GB / 2-zone reference configuration
How usage changes the bill $2 per million records beyond 10M Deployment RAM-hours, data transfer, snapshots, synthetics, and inference
Other published Elastic levels One Team plan shape; Growth is $249/month Gold $114 · Platinum $131 · Enterprise $184 for the same reference configuration
See the exact pricing math and sources 10 published inputs · 3 official sources · checked August 20, 2026

Calculation scope

Elastic Cloud Hosted's published monthly reference prices for Standard, Gold, Platinum, and Enterprise. Every price uses Elastic's stated cloud production configuration of 120 GB storage across two zones. The disclosure preserves that configuration instead of presenting the figures as workload-based estimates.

Basis: USD; Elastic-published Cloud Hosted monthly reference prices. Prices checked .

Published inputs

Logfire Team base
$49/month Pydantic Logfire source
Logfire Growth base
$249/month Pydantic Logfire source
Logfire included telemetry
10,000,000 records/month Pydantic Logfire source
Logfire additional telemetry
$2 per 1,000,000 records Pydantic Logfire source
Elastic Cloud Hosted reference configuration
120 GB storage / 2 zones Elastic source
Elastic Cloud Hosted deployment capacity
GB of RAM per hour; CPU and disk scale with RAM Elastic source
Elastic Standard published reference price
$99/month Elastic source
Elastic Gold published reference price
$114/month Elastic source
Elastic Platinum published reference price
$131/month Elastic source
Elastic Enterprise published reference price
$184/month Elastic source

Assumptions

Published Elastic configuration
120 GB storage across two zones Elastic ties all four displayed subscription prices to this cloud production configuration; the table does not imply a different workload or capacity. Elastic source
Primary billing dimension
Deployment capacity in GB of RAM per hour Elastic says CPU and disk scale with RAM and are included in the node price, and that deployment capacity usually makes up most of the bill. Elastic source
Cross-vendor equivalence
No capability or workload equivalence claimed Elastic subscription levels and Logfire plans package different features and use different billing units.
Variable Elastic charges
Not estimated Actual charges depend on provider, region, hardware profile, node sizes, running time, transfer, snapshots, synthetics, and inference. Elastic source

Calculations

Published entry configurations

This compares each vendor's published monthly entry configuration without claiming the included capacity or features are equivalent.

Logfire Team
$49
  1. Monthly base Team plan $49
  2. Included usage 10,000,000 records $0 additional
Elastic Cloud Hosted Standard
$99
  1. Published reference price Standard · 120 GB storage · 2 zones $99

Other Elastic subscription levels

Elastic publishes these prices against the same 120 GB, two-zone reference configuration.

Elastic Cloud Hosted Gold
$114
  1. Published reference price Gold · 120 GB storage · 2 zones $114
Elastic Cloud Hosted Platinum
$131
  1. Published reference price Platinum · 120 GB storage · 2 zones $131
Elastic Cloud Hosted Enterprise
$184
  1. Published reference price Enterprise · 120 GB storage · 2 zones $184

When usage grows beyond the entry configuration

Logfire publishes a deterministic record overage. Elastic Cloud Hosted requires a deployment choice before its capacity-based total can be calculated.

Logfire Team at 11M records
$51
  1. Monthly base Team plan $49
  2. Record overage (11M − 10M included) ÷ 1M × $2 $2
Elastic Cloud Hosted
Varies
  1. Deployment capacity Node RAM-hours + add-ons Varies by deployment

Source ledger

  1. Pydantic Logfire — Pricing and plans for Pydantic Logfire Official vendor source · checked https://pydantic.dev/pricing
    “Covers 10 million logs, spans, and metrics every month.”

    The official calculator shows 20 million records and no extra seats totaling $69/month on Team.

  2. Elastic — Elastic Cloud Hosted pricing Official vendor source · checked https://www.elastic.co/pricing/cloud-hosted?cta=obs
    “Based on cloud production config, 120 GB storage / 2 zones.”

    Elastic publishes monthly reference prices of $99 Standard, $114 Gold, $131 Platinum, and $184 Enterprise for the same stated configuration.

  3. Elastic — Elastic Cloud Hosted billing dimensions Official vendor source · checked https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/cloud-organization/billing/cloud-hosted-deployment-billing-dimensions
    “Each node type is priced in terms of GB of RAM per hour”

    Elastic says deployment capacity is usually the largest part of the bill; data transfer, snapshots, synthetics, and inference are additional dimensions.

What this calculation does not include

  • Elastic presents these as its minimum monthly prices for the stated reference configuration; an actual deployment can cost more.
  • Cloud provider, region, hardware profile, RAM-hours, node types, data transfer, snapshot usage, synthetics, and inference can change the Elastic total.
  • Elastic includes CPU and disk with RAM-priced nodes, but additional node types such as Kibana, APM, and ML contribute to deployment capacity.
  • Taxes, marketplace terms, negotiated discounts, support arrangements, and annual commitments are excluded.
  • Logfire bills records while Elastic Cloud Hosted bills provisioned capacity and other resource dimensions, so no equivalent-workload total is claimed.
FAQ

Common questions

Is Elastic locked in to a proprietary format?

Not in the licensing sense, and their own page says so plainly: “APM should be open. Period.” Elastic supports OpenTelemetry semantic conventions and W3C trace context, and ships EDOT, their own supported OpenTelemetry distribution. The two Python instrumentation paths are not equally common in the 30-day PyPI snapshot used here: elastic-apm had 1.76 million downloads against 86 thousand for elastic-opentelemetry, or about 95% across those two packages. Downloads are not customer share, but the Elastic-specific agent remains active and carries no deprecation notice. It is open source and speaks Elastic's intake protocol rather than OTLP, so moving off it is a migration rather than an endpoint change. Elastic's guides make the Java agent a JVM flag swap with no code changes, while custom Agent API spans must be ported to OpenTelemetry. Logfire's SDK emits OpenTelemetry already, so the same instrumentation can be pointed at another compatible OTLP backend.

Then what is the actual difference?

Workflow, query interface, and billing. Logfire connects full-stack telemetry to datasets, evaluators, human review, and production improvement through PostgreSQL-compatible SQL and MCP. Elastic combines observability with its broader search and security platform, with Cloud Hosted priced around deployment capacity and additional resource dimensions.

What does Elastic Cloud Hosted bill for?

Its main dimension is deployment capacity: the nodes in the deployment are priced by GB of RAM per hour, with CPU and disk scaled with RAM. Data transfer, snapshot storage, synthetics, and inference can add separate charges. Logfire prices records with no separate retention line: Personal includes 10 million a month, while Team is $49 with the same allowance and $2 per million after it.

What does Elastic's published $99 price represent?

Elastic ties the Standard price to a cloud production reference configuration with 120 GB of storage across two zones. Gold is $114, Platinum $131, and Enterprise $184 against that same stated configuration. Actual cost varies with the deployment you choose and how long its resources run, so we show the reference configuration rather than treating $99 as a workload estimate.

How many query languages am I learning?

Elastic uses ES|QL, with KQL and Query DSL still present in parts of the product. Logfire uses PostgreSQL-compatible SQL across traces, logs, and metrics, and exposes the same query workflow to coding agents through MCP.

What about AI and LLM applications?

Elastic's APM page covers tracing LLM calls through OpenTelemetry instrumentation, including LangChain, LangTrace, OpenLIT and OpenLLMetry, so the traces arrive. What is not there is the evaluation half: datasets, scorers, experiments, human annotation. Tracing tells you what your model did; evals tell you whether it was any good, and shipping AI features without the second one means changing prompts and hoping.

Can I run both during an evaluation?

Yes. Both accept OTLP, so an OpenTelemetry Collector can fan the same telemetry out to both, and you can run the same debugging task in each without instrumenting twice. That is the practical dividend of both of us being genuinely OTel-native, and it is the fairest way to choose.

Try Logfire alongside Elastic

Both accept OTLP, so a collector can send the same telemetry to each and you can decide on your own traces. 10 million records a month, free.

Start free Book a demo View pricing plans