Best Log Management · alternatives
Best Papertrail alternatives (2026)
10 alternatives to Papertrail in log management, ranked by entry price. Papertrail starts at $0/mo. Every figure links to the public page it was captured from — the vendor's own wherever the vendor publishes the number, otherwise the named public source — with the date we captured it.
Key takeaways
- Free alternatives: Better Stack, Grafana Cloud Logs, Loggly (SolarWinds), New Relic Logs, Sematext Logs, SigNoz Cloud.
- Closest by price: Better Stack ($0/mo), Grafana Cloud Logs ($0/mo), Loggly (SolarWinds) ($0/mo).
Papertrail alternatives compared
| # | Alternative | Entry price | Free | HIPAA | Best for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Better Stack | $0/mo | Yes | No | Startups and SMBs wanting all-in-one observability + uptime monitoring at flat pricing | betterstack.com |
| 2 | Grafana Cloud Logs | $0/mo | Yes | — | Teams already using Grafana/Prometheus/Loki wanting a fully managed, no-ops cloud version | grafana.com |
| 3 | Loggly (SolarWinds) | $0/mo | Yes | — | Teams already in the SolarWinds ecosystem | loggly.com |
| 4 | New Relic Logs | $0/mo | Yes | Yes | Teams wanting a very generous free tier (100 GB/month) before committing | newrelic.com |
| 5 | Sematext Logs STALE · 2026-06-14 | $0/mo | Yes | — | Small to mid-size engineering teams wanting affordable ELK-compatible log management | sematext.com |
| 6 | SigNoz Cloud | $0/mo | Yes | Yes | OpenTelemetry-first engineering teams wanting a single platform for logs, traces, and metrics | signoz.io |
| 7 | Logit.io STALE · 2026-06-14 | $9/mo | No | Yes | UK/EU companies needing ISO 27001, GDPR, and Cyber Essentials alongside log management | logit.io |
| 8 | Datadog Logs | usage-priced | No | Yes | Enterprises already using Datadog for APM or infrastructure monitoring | datadoghq.com |
| 9 | Logz.io | usage-priced | No | — | Teams already familiar with ELK/OpenSearch wanting a managed, scalable SaaS version | logz.io |
| 10 | Sumo Logic | not priced monthly | No | Yes | SecOps teams needing unified log management and cloud SIEM in one platform | sumologic.com |
Data current through 2026-09-05. STALE marks a row with at least one plan we have not re-checked at its source in over 30 days. 2 of 10 rows above are marked. Compare any two directly on the Log Management index.