A Datadog alternative that runs
behind your firewall.
Datadog is an excellent product if your production data can live in Datadog's cloud and the bill grows predictably with it. Ultraviolet is for teams where one of those isn't true.
The short version
Choose Ultraviolet if
- Your telemetry can't leave your environment — regulated data, data residency, customer contracts, or an air-gapped network.
- Your observability bill is hard to predict because it grows with log volume, spans and add-ons.
- You run Kubernetes and want services, traces, logs, metrics and profiles without instrumenting every application.
Choose Datadog if
- Sending telemetry to a vendor's cloud is fine for you.
- You want nothing to run yourself — not even the storage.
- You need its breadth: hundreds of integrations, security products, mobile apps and CI visibility in one place.
Side by side
| Ultraviolet | Datadog | |
|---|---|---|
| Where your telemetry is stored | UltravioletYour cluster, on your disks | DatadogDatadog's cloud (regional sites, incl. EU and US government). Logs can stay in your object storage with BYOC Logs; the UI and everything else stay in Datadog's cloud |
| Runs with no connection to the vendor | UltravioletYes — air-gapped installs are supported | DatadogNo |
| What crosses your firewall | UltravioletA license heartbeat — or nothing, air-gapped | DatadogYour telemetry (or, for BYOC Logs, log queries and their results) |
| Seeing services without code changes | UltravioletYes — requests, connections, profiles on every node | DatadogYes — Universal Service Monitoring, and libraries injected automatically |
| How you pay | UltravioletPer node, per minute it ran | DatadogPer host per product, plus per GB of logs ingested and per million lines indexed, plus other usage |
| Cost of keeping more data, for longer | UltravioletDisk in your environment | DatadogMetered: retention tiers and indexing |
| Infrastructure you run | UltravioletThe core, in your cluster (one Helm install) | DatadogOnly the agent — Datadog runs the rest |
| Breadth of products and integrations | UltravioletKubernetes-first: APM, logs, metrics, profiling, RUM, synthetics, SLOs, cost | DatadogVery broad: hundreds of integrations, security, mobile, CI and more |
Where your data lives
Datadog is a cloud service: the agent on your hosts sends metrics, traces and logs to Datadog, which stores and analyses them. You choose a regional site — there are sites in the EU and for US government — but the data leaves your environment.
Datadog also offers BYOC Logs (also called CloudPrem): logs are indexed and stored in your own object storage, while the Datadog UI, hosted by Datadog, sends queries to it and receives the results. It covers logs only — traces, metrics and the rest of the product stay in Datadog's cloud — and needs a connection to Datadog. Check its current availability with Datadog.
Ultraviolet runs entirely in your cluster: collection, storage, the UI, alerting, even the AI that investigates incidents, on a model you host or none. The only thing that leaves is a license heartbeat, and air-gapped installs don't need that.
What it costs
Datadog prices each product per host, then meters usage: log volume ingested, log lines indexed, retention, spans and more. Each line is reasonable on its own; together they make the bill hard to predict, because it grows with how much you log and trace.
Ultraviolet is $25 per node per month, billed on the minutes each node ran. Data volume, retention and users aren't metered — keeping more data costs disk in your own environment.
For example, 50 Kubernetes nodes on Datadog's annual list prices for Infrastructure Pro, APM and Cloud Network Monitoring come to $2,550 a month before any log, span or retention charges. Ultraviolet's license for the same nodes is $1,250 a month, plus the infrastructure to run it. The pricing calculator estimates both, including logs and the infrastructure, for your own numbers.
Seeing services without code changes
Both products can show your services' requests, errors and latency without changing code: Datadog through Universal Service Monitoring and automatic library injection, Ultraviolet through a sensor on every node. Ultraviolet's sensor also produces traces, the service connection graph, and continuous CPU profiles for Go, Python, C, C++ and Rust — included in the per-node price. If your applications are already instrumented with OpenTelemetry, Ultraviolet ingests that too.
What you run
This is Datadog's real advantage: you run an agent and nothing else. With Ultraviolet you run the core in your own cluster — one Helm install, with sizing guidance and upgrades from the UI. That's the price of your data staying home, and for many teams it's the point.
Moving over
Ultraviolet sees traffic on its own as soon as the sensor is installed. It also accepts OpenTelemetry, Prometheus remote write and Fluent Bit, so existing instrumentation and pipelines can point at it, and you can run both side by side while you compare.
Claims about Datadog were checked against its public documentation and pricing on October 15, 2026. Products and prices change — we're happy to walk through a current, specific comparison on a call.
- Datadog list prices
- Datadog BYOC Logs (CloudPrem)
- Datadog Universal Service Monitoring
- Datadog Single Step APM Instrumentation
Datadog is a trademark of Datadog, Inc. Ultraviolet Observability is not affiliated with Datadog.
Run it in your own cluster this week.
A 30-minute call, then an evaluation core on your infrastructure. You will see your own services, traces and logs — from your own traffic — before you decide anything.
- No data leaves your environment, including during the trial
- Helm install, works fully air-gapped
- You talk to the engineers who built it