Prometheus Pricing Calculator 2026
Estimate your total cost including hidden fees
The Prometheus calculator estimates the cost of your selected plan. Change the team size where pricing is per person, choose an available billing period, and add reported extras that apply to your contract.
Enter your requirements below to see the recurring cost and first-year total. Unverified extras are excluded.
- Plans: 1 tiers; see plan details for free, usage-based or custom pricing
- Engineering Operational Overhead (Self-Hosted): $20,000-$60,000/year in engineering time (source dated Mar 2025)
- Managed Service Cost Shock from Scrape Interval Misconfiguration: 4-5x cost increase vs expected
- Managed Prometheus Expensive at Scale: 5-10x cost vs self-hosted at scale
Reported extras may depend on your usage and contract. Confirm the final quote with Prometheus.
As of November 2026, Prometheus is free. Prometheus offers 1 pricing tier. Reported extras are shown below. Only costs with a clear amount and billing basis can be added to the estimate. Pricing verified from 5 sources by CostBench.
Flat plan fee shown. Separately billed usage and add-ons are excluded.
Your Estimate
Cost Breakdown
Includes one-time costs (implementation, training)
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Real-World Prometheus Cost Examples
Self-Hosted Small Team (10 services)
$0 per month$0/month for the software; you pay only for the EC2 and EBS infrastructure
A 10-person startup self-hosting Prometheus on a single t3.xlarge EC2 instance with EBS storage, monitoring 10 services with ~50M samples/month. No long-term storage, 15-day local retention.
Self-Hosted Production (High Availability)
$0 per month$0/month for the software; costs come from EC2, S3 storage and engineering time
A mid-size engineering team running 3x r5.large EC2 instances with Thanos for long-term S3 storage, monitoring a Kubernetes cluster with ~500M samples/month and 90-day retention.
Grafana Cloud Free Tier
$0 per month$0/month
A small team monitoring a few microservices using Grafana Cloud's hosted Prometheus with up to 10,000 active series and 14-day retention. No infrastructure to manage.
Enterprise Scale (Chronosphere / Sysdig)
CustomCustom pricing, quoted by the vendor
A large enterprise with 50+ services, millions of active series, multi-tenancy requirements, and compliance needs. Typically includes dedicated support, cardinality management, and custom SLA.
Small Team: Self-Hosted Infrastructure Only
$1,800 per year$1,800/year ($150/month)
Single Prometheus instance on a t3.xlarge equivalent, scraping 105k samples every 10 seconds, no HA or redundancy. Infrastructure cost only — excludes engineering labor.
HN community comment (2021-09-30)Small Team Self-Hosted (Single Instance)
$150 per month$150/month ($1,800/year) for compute
A small team running Prometheus on a t3.xlarge AWS instance with 105k samples/10s scrape interval, no redundancy. Includes compute only — no storage or query cost overhead.
HN comment (m1keil, 2021-09-30)Compare at This Team Size
Frequently Asked Questions
01 How accurate is this Prometheus pricing calculator?
This calculator uses official Prometheus pricing data verified as of 2026-07-08. Hidden cost estimates are based on 8 verified cost categories from real user reports. Actual costs may vary based on negotiated discounts, specific feature requirements, and implementation complexity.
02 What hidden costs should I include in my Prometheus budget?
Our calculator includes 4 verified hidden cost categories for Prometheus: Engineering Operational Overhead (Self-Hosted), Infrastructure & Server Costs for Self-Hosting, Grafana or Dashboarding Tool Required, Migration Cost from Managed Observability Platforms. Toggle each to see how they affect your total cost.
03 Should I choose monthly or annual billing for Prometheus?
Compare the published annual total with twelve monthly payments when both are available. An annual commitment may reduce flexibility; confirm cancellation terms and whether the quoted plan fits your needs.
04 How do I know which Prometheus tier I need?
Start with your must-have features. Prometheus offers 1 tier and is free. Entry tiers work for basic needs, while enterprise tiers add advanced security, customization, and support.
05 Can I negotiate Prometheus pricing below calculator estimates?
Negotiated pricing depends on the vendor, plan and contract. We do not assume a discount in this estimate. See our negotiation guide for tactics.