Datadog vs Vercel Pricing 2026
Complete pricing comparison between Datadog and Vercel. Find out which developer tools tool is right for you.
Datadog pricing ranges from $0–$23/host/month, while Vercel ranges from $0–$50/user/month. Datadog is typically 25% more affordable, though your actual cost depends on tier and team size.
The right choice between Datadog and Vercel depends on your specific requirements: team size, feature needs, and integration requirements all affect which option delivers better value.
See the tier-by-tier breakdown below to compare specific plans, or use our calculators to estimate costs: Datadog calculator | Vercel calculator
Datadog and Vercel are both essential developer tools, but they serve fundamentally different purposes. Datadog is a cloud monitoring and observability platform that tracks infrastructure performance, application metrics, and logs across your entire stack. Vercel is a frontend deployment and hosting platform built around serverless architecture, optimized for frameworks like Next.js. While Datadog helps you understand what's happening inside your applications after deployment, Vercel focuses on getting your code deployed and served globally with minimal configuration. Teams often use both together—Vercel for deployment and Datadog for monitoring—but if budget forces a choice, your decision depends on whether deployment speed or observability is your bigger pain point.
Pricing Tier Comparison
| Tier | Datadog | Vercel |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free /month | Free /user/month |
| Pro | $15 /host/month | $20 /user/month |
| Enterprise | $23 /host/month | Custom |
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Our Verdict
Choose Datadog if your primary challenge is monitoring, debugging, and maintaining visibility across complex distributed systems. Datadog excels when you have multiple services, microservices, or infrastructure components that need unified observability. Its per-host pricing starting at $15/month makes it accessible for small deployments, and the free tier covers up to 5 hosts for basic monitoring needs.
Choose Vercel if your priority is fast, reliable frontend deployments with minimal DevOps overhead. Vercel is the ideal choice for teams building with Next.js or other modern frameworks who want automatic preview deployments, global CDN delivery, and serverless functions without managing infrastructure. Its generous free Hobby tier and $20/user/month Pro plan make it affordable for small teams focused on shipping quickly.
Frequently Asked Questions
01 Can Datadog and Vercel be used together?
Yes, many teams use both tools in tandem. Vercel handles deployment and hosting while Datadog monitors application performance, logs, and infrastructure health. Vercel offers built-in analytics, but Datadog provides much deeper observability including APM traces, custom metrics, and cross-service correlation that Vercel's built-in monitoring cannot match.
02 Which is cheaper for a small development team?
Both offer free tiers, making them accessible for small teams. Vercel's Hobby plan is free for non-commercial use, and its Pro plan is $20/user/month. Datadog's free tier covers 5 hosts with 1-day retention, and Pro starts at $15/host/month. For a 3-person team with 5 hosts, Vercel Pro would cost $60/month while Datadog Pro would cost $75/month, though these tools serve different purposes and aren't direct substitutes.
03 Does Vercel have built-in monitoring that replaces Datadog?
Vercel offers Web Analytics and Speed Insights for frontend performance monitoring, but these are limited compared to Datadog's full observability suite. Vercel's monitoring covers page load times, Core Web Vitals, and basic request logs. Datadog provides deep APM, infrastructure monitoring, log management, custom dashboards, alerting, and distributed tracing across your entire backend—capabilities Vercel does not offer.