Librato Pricing explained¶
We charge you for each metric stream you send us metered by the hour. The cost of the metric stream is determined by its resolution.
What is a metric stream? A metric’s cardinality is defined by now many streams are associated with it. For example, if you have a metric tracking CPU on one server your cardinality is 1; the metric has one metric stream. If you are tracking CPU from 100 servers then the cardinality is 100; the metric has 100 metric streams associated with it.
A note of caution:
Tags can affect the cardinality of a metric. If you just use tags to add context, e.g. if
you add a role tag to a server, you are just describing what it does. However, if for example
you are tracking a request latency metric and you add a user_id tag to it and have 1,000 users, the cardinality increases from 1 to 1,000 which directly affects the cost of the service.
We offer two types of plans: a Production plan and a free but limited Developer plan.
Production Plan¶
The minimum charge for the Production plan is $5/mo.
The Production plan gives you unrestricted access to all of the features offered by our platform and priority access to email and live chat support. Per metric stream charges are based on the resolution of the metric. At this time, we support up to 5 sec. resolution.
The table below shows what we charge per metric:
| Metric Resolution | Price / Metric Stream / Month |
|---|---|
| 5 sec. | $0.318 |
| 10 sec. | $0.265 |
| 15 sec. | $0.212 |
| 30 sec. | $0.159 |
| 60 sec. | $0.106 |
| 300 sec. and higher | $0.053 |
You don’t have to send data at a prescribed resolution. If you send us metrics at any other resolution we interpolate between the above prices to calculate your charge. For example a metric with a 3min resolution would be charged at $0.08/mo.
Only pay for what you use¶
We meter by the hour so if you have ephemeral infrastructure or short lived metrics we will detect within an hour if a metric stops reporting and only charge for what we write to disk. In case you are interested: a metric with a 60 sec. resolution will cost you about $0.000137 per hour.
Only pay for the data we keep¶
Librato offers Service-Side Aggregation (SSA). You can use this to combine multiple metric streams into a single metric. For example if you have 32 responding processes on a single host which all report with the same tag set, they can be combined and priced as a single source. If you’re sampling data at a higher resolution than you want to keep, you can also use this feature to let us aggregate data points and store the metric at lower resolution. We only charge for storage of the aggregated metrics.
Volume Discount¶
Our pricing has a built in volume discount that is based on your monthly usage:
| Monthly usage over.. | Discount at.. |
|---|---|
| $400 | 15% |
| $1,000 | 20% |
| $2,000 | 25% |
| $4,000 | 35% |
| $8,000 | 40% |
For example if your bill is $1,800 before discount, the volume discount is calculated as:
Total discount: $250 (13.89%). You can see your estimated volume discount in the Top Metrics Report in your account settings.
What are “normalized stream units”?¶
On your statement you will see a line item of the type “Usage” with the detail that includes the term “normalized stream units”. For example:
Streams: 16736 x 100 normalized stream units
This is to simplify your billing statement. Since you can send us metrics at any resolution you like and each resolution has a different cost, we normalize the data by translating everything into 60 second streams.
For example a metric at 60s resolution costs $0.10 whereas a metric at 15s resolution costs $0.20 (so 2x). A 15s metric is therefore the equivalent of two 60s metric streams.
Optional monthly / yearly subscription¶
If you prefer a subscription with fixed monthly or yearly payments instead of monthly pay-per-use charges, please contact us at sales@librato.com.
I want a detailed cost estimate. How can I get that?¶
You can find a pricing overview for each integration on our pricing page. We also provide you with estimated charges based on your recent use of our service - you can find it on your Account Settings under Plans & Billing. If you’d like to do more detailed pricing exercises, please contact us at technicalsupport@solarwinds.com.
Developer plan¶
The Developer plan allows you to send us up to 100 metric streams with a maximum resolution of 60 sec. and a 1 day retention period, or a maximum resolution of 5 min. and a 2 week retention period. The plan includes 10 alerts, 2 annotation streams, one dashboard, access to our Knowledge Base and best effort email and chat room support.
Free Trial¶
We offer a free trial during which you can test our service. At any time during the trial, you can sign up for the Production plan. If you do not sign up for the Production plan during your trial period you will be given a choice to continue under the Production plan or the Developer plan at the end of your trial. If you select the Developer plan you will be able to upgrade to the Production plan later.
FAQ¶
- What is a metric? A metric is any type of numerical variable used to gauge some quantifiable measure of performance of a type of object (server, application, business, sensor, etc.) that can be monitored. Examples of metrics: requests/sec. serviced by an application, CPU load, stock price, temperature, number of website visits.
- What is a tag? A tag is meta data associated with a metric that adds adds context or detail. You can use tags to identify server instances, application names, user ids, etc.
- What is a measurement? A measurement is the value of a metric as measured for a specific object instance at a specific point in time; it is represented as a time/value pair and the identification by a tag set. Examples of measurements: the CPU load of server x at 3:11am on 10/31/2012, the temperature on the North Pole at 12pm GMT on 12/17/2012.
- What is a metric stream? A metric stream is one instance of a time-ordered series of measurements. Examples: the CPU load of server x, measured at 10 sec. intervals; the air temperature as measured every 300 sec. by sensor y.
- What is resolution? Resolution is the time interval between subsequent measurements. For example, a 10 sec. resolution means measurements are taken 10 sec. apart. When the measurement interval is shorter, the resolution is higher, so a 5 sec. measurement interval is a higher resolution than a measurement interval of 1 hour.
- What if I measure the same metric across multiple servers - or application instances? If you measure one metric across several servers, for example CPU load across 5 server instances, this represents 5 metric streams and you are submitting 5 measurements (one per metric stream) every time interval.
- You say that you only charge me for data that you store for me; what do you mean by that? You can tell us to aggregate multiple metric streams from different sources into a single metric. You can also tell us to store data at a different (of course lower) resolution from the one you’re submitting data at. We will only charge you for the data we end up keeping for you. For example, you’re sending us 3 metrics from 3 different processes with a 10 sec resolution, but want to aggregate this into a single (application level) metric with a 20 sec resolution. We will charge you for a single 20 sec resolution metric.
- Are you going to lock me into a contract? No. With Librato’s pay-as-you-go service, you are not tied into a long term contract. We just calculate the price for the use of our services at the end of each month and charge your credit card.
- Can I try your service before I sign up for a Production plan? We offer a free trial during which you have unrestricted use of our service. At any time during the trial, you can sign up for the Production plan. If you do not sign up for the Production plan during your trial period you will be given a choice to continue under the Production plan or the Development plan at the end of your trial. If you select the Development plan you will be able to upgrade to the Production plan later.
- How many measurements can I send you? We use a dynamically extensible scale-out infrastructure and impose no limit as to how many measurements you can send us. We’d appreciate a heads-up if you plan to send us more than 1M measurements per minute though, so we can make sure we scale our infrastructure ahead of time.
- What if I want to move to another service? We of course hope that you will never leave but if you do decide to move to another service you can pull your data out at any time. Our API provides full access to retrieve the data you’ve sent us.
- How long do you keep my data? See the Understanding Metrics Roll-Ups, Retention and Graph Resolution article for details.
- What if I change my resolution or stop a metric mid month? We meter by the hour so we detect if a metric is only sending measurements during part of your subscription month or the resolution of the metric varies during the month. We charge you per metric instance per hour, based on the average resolution for the hour.
- What discounts do you offer? We offer discounts for educational institutions, for non-profits, volume discounts, and pre-payment discounts. If you need more information please contact us at sales@librato.com.
- Can I use Librato at our university? Yes. We provide educational institutions with a 50% discount. Please inquire by emailing us at sales@librato.com.
- I don’t like monthly charges; are there other payment options? If you prefer to pay for longer periods in advance, please contact us at sales@librato.com.
- Can I be invoiced instead of having payments charged to my credit card? We can invoice you for payments over $1000 if you are using our prepayment option. Please contact us at sales@librato.com.