What you runRunning Dynatrace?
Ordinary hosts pay for depth only a few services use.
Dynatrace does depth like nobody else: automatic instrumentation, topology discovery and causal analysis that genuinely shorten investigations. The pressure is the per-host meter: every host is licensed, whether it runs a revenue-critical service or basic checks.
Free. No system access. No obligation. You keep the drawing.
Dynatrace APM and monitoring
$29 per host a month
To monitor one host for a month, at list price.
Full-Stack Monitoring with APM is $58 a month for an 8 GiB host.
Dynatrace pricing, checked 2026-09-24
01The four problems
Which of these hits your Dynatrace estate?
Budget, renewals, the order to bring in AI, and collection that runs on someone else’s agents. Each one is about where the data lives, and with Dynatrace it lives in Dynatrace’s ecosystem. Pick yours.
“Every node we add costs as much to watch as the services that make us money.”
Pay Dynatrace for the depth you use. Watch the ordinary tier on a store you own.
- Why it happens
Dynatrace licenses every host. Ordinary nodes on basic checks sit on the same meter as the services that need causal depth.
- What changes
Deep tracing stays on the crown-jewel paths. Ordinary nodes move to an open fleet and a store you own, with each alert proven in writing first.
- How sure you can be
Nothing is lost. The full copy stays in your Lake and replays on demand, and every routing rule is readable code. The reduction is measured on your own noisiest sources, before and after, in writing.
- How soon
With the first source. We start where the most volume sits, prove it, then continue.
- What it takes from you
Your diagrams and one call to start. We build it as code in your repositories and teach your team to run it.
What shrinks
- GB indexed by your SIEMOnly what detection reads is indexed. Duplicates, debug output and unread fields stay out.
- Tokens per AI investigationEvery query to the Lake returns only the fields the agent needs.
- Hosts on per-node licensesOrdinary hosts move to monitoring you own. The APM keeps the apps that earn it.
- Vendor licenses and modulesYou keep the features that earn their price, not the whole platform.
Shapes, not figures. Yours are measured on your own sources in the review.
“Everything draws down one platform commitment, and it only grows.”
Scope the commitment to what earns it. Own everything else.
- Why it happens
One annual commitment covers every capability, drawn down at the rate card. Each capability you add makes the commitment bigger and the exit harder.
- What changes
The ordinary tier, its alerts and its dashboards become code in your repositories. The Dynatrace commitment shrinks to the work only Dynatrace can do.
- How sure you can be
The detections, dashboards and alerts your team relies on keep firing where they do today. A move becomes a parallel run on the same routed feed, proven before anything is retired.
- How soon
Before your next renewal, if we start with the sources that drive it.
- What it takes from you
Your diagrams, your renewal date, and one call.
Your way out
- MigrationToday: Quarters of overlapping licensesWith you in control: Weeks: a parallel run, then a routing change
- Your dataToday: Their format, in their storeWith you in control: Open schemas, OCSF and OpenTelemetry, in your Lake
- HistoryToday: Stays behind when you leaveWith you in control: Replays into any tool you choose
- Collection and fleetToday: Their agents, their consoleWith you in control: A control layer and fleet plane you own
“Davis is good, and it only reasons over what Dynatrace holds.”
Your agents, on your data, following your runbooks. Not one more module on their price list.
- Why it happens
The platform’s AI reasons over the data the platform holds, in its format, on its price list. It is their AI, on their rules and their runbooks, never yours.
- What changes
We trim every event in flight to only the fields an agent needs and land it in your Lake. When you add AI triage later, your agent runs in your account on a model you approve, follows the trace ID Dynatrace raises into the history around it, read-only, and works the alerts you choose, with a person on every exception.
- How sure you can be
Agents reason well on clean, trimmed data and badly on noise. Knowing which fields matter takes understanding machine data, source by source, and that is the work we do.
- How soon
As soon as the first sources land clean in your Lake, your agent has something worth reading.
- What it takes from you
Your runbooks, or we write them with you. The agents, prompts and runbooks are code you own.
What you get running
- Agents you control, in your accountThey run where your data is, under your access rules.
- Models you choose, and swapSmall or open-weight models for routine alerts, larger ones for investigations. Changing one is a config change, not a renewal.
- Your runbooks, as codeVersioned in your repositories. The agent follows them step by step.
- Token controlFields trimmed in flight to what the agent needs, so every query reads less and costs less.
- Fixes as pull requestsThe agent writes the fix, a person approves it, and remediation moves at the speed of a review.
- A Lake anyone can queryDevelopers and stakeholders ask the clean Lake directly, at object-storage prices.
“We want OpenTelemetry everywhere, not OneAgent on every host.”
LaterA later step, sold only after step one is proved on your data.
OneAgent where depth pays. Open collectors everywhere else.
- Why it happens
OneAgent instruments everything by default, so collection starts inside Dynatrace on every host.
- What changes
Open collectors on the ordinary tier, managed from a console you own. OneAgent stays where causal depth pays for itself.
- How sure you can be
OpenTelemetry is the open standard the major APM vendors already accept. Nothing about your destinations has to change on day one.
- How soon
Later. We start with the logs in front of your SIEM, because that is where the money is. Open collection follows once that is proved, host group by host group.
- What it takes from you
Your diagrams and one call. We plan the order with you.
Your control plane
- OpenTelemetry collectorsOpenOne open collector on every host, built for your estate.
- A fleet plane you ownYoursConfiguration and rollout from a console in your account, under OpAMP.
- Changes as pull requestsAs codeAI native: an assistant drafts the change, your team reviews and merges it.
- No vendor agentsRemovedNothing on a host reports to someone else’s console.
- Monitoring, only what earns itYour callStep away from a vendor’s full architecture and keep only the features you value.
02Today, and after
Today, and with the Blueprint
A Dynatrace estate runs OneAgent everywhere on the per-host meter, so ordinary nodes on basic checks pay for the platform built for crown-jewel paths that need causal depth.
Scroll the drawing sideways to see all of it.
What Dynatrace does best
Dynatrace does depth like nobody else: automatic instrumentation, topology discovery, and causal analysis that genuinely shortens investigations on complex distributed applications. On the services where a minute of latency is revenue, that depth earns its price.
The problem is that per-host pricing does not distinguish the crown jewels from the crowd. Ordinary nodes running ordinary processes, watched by basic checks, sit on the same meter as the paths that need causal AI, and renewals grow with the estate whether or not those nodes produce anything anyone reads.
How it works, and where we sit
Dynatrace is the deep-tracing platform: OneAgent installs once per host and instruments everything automatically, PurePath traces follow every request end to end, and its Davis engine turns the topology it discovers into problems rather than raw alerts. It is licensed per host, so the ordinary node running basic checks pays the same kind of meter as the crown-jewel path that genuinely needs causal depth. We keep Dynatrace on the paths that earn it, and run everything else on an open fleet you own.
03The five verbs
What we keep, and what changes
Keep it and govern what flows in, shrink its footprint, cut what it costs, extend it with an agent, and replace only where replacement is honest.
- Keep
Dynatrace on the crown-jewel paths: the complex, revenue-critical applications where its causal depth and PurePath tracing genuinely shorten incidents and earn the per-host price.
- Shrink
The licensed footprint contracts to the hosts that earn it, deliberately scoped and defended in the renewal conversation with the tier split written down before anyone negotiates.
- Cut
The ordinary tier comes off per-host pricing entirely, onto OpenTelemetry collection and an open source time series database you own, running in your own account.
- Extend
Traces and logs land in the Lake carrying the same trace ID, so an agent you own follows what Dynatrace raises into everything around it, on the ordinary tier Dynatrace never saw.
- Replace
Only the per-node infrastructure monitoring tier, and only with each alert rebuilt and proven to behave as it does today, tier by tier and in writing, first.
The letters mark where each verb acts in the drawing with the Blueprint.
Scope the depth, own the rest
The estate splits into the few hosts that need causal tracing and the many that need basic checks, and only one of those tiers should be rented.
We inventory the estate against what each tier actually consumes: which applications use the deep instrumentation, which hosts only ever report CPU, disk, and process checks. The ordinary tier moves to the open fleet with alert parity in writing. The deep tier stays, smaller and defensible.
What you own after: collection, alerts, and dashboards on the ordinary tier as code in your repositories, a Lake that holds the history, and a Dynatrace contract scoped to the work only Dynatrace can do.
04The free architecture review
We draw your Dynatrace estate, free.
Telemetry engineers look at your whole environment and show you exactly where the cost, the waste and the hurdles are, and what your architecture could look like. No strings attached.
What you get
- Your Dynatrace architecture today, drawnEvery source, pipeline and destination, as it actually flows.
- The waste mapWhere you pay for data nobody reads, and what it costs you each year.
- Costs before and after, with estimatesWhat you spend now, and what the same coverage would cost.
- Your target architectureWhat your Dynatrace estate could look like, drawn on your own sources.
- Options for your business problemNot one product. The choices, with what each one costs and changes.
Who does it
A lead architect with 26 years in monitoring and observability, leading a team of senior engineers in telemetry engineering and pipeline design. The team that reviews it is the team that would build it.
What it takes from you
Your diagrams and one call. No system access.
What comes next
If it pays, a two-week proof of value on your noisiest source, free unless you go ahead. At least 20% less into your SIEM, every alert kept, proved on your data.
What it costs
Nothing
No strings attached. You keep the drawing, whatever you decide.
05Questions
What Dynatrace teams ask before they book
Why not replace Dynatrace entirely?
Because on the right services its causal analysis is genuinely hard to reproduce, and pretending otherwise would cost you real capability. The honest move is scoping it to the paths that earn its price and taking the ordinary tier off per-host pricing.
What proves the open fleet matches our current alerting?
Every monitor and alert on the hosts that move is exported, rebuilt on the open stack, and proven to fire on the same conditions, tier by tier and in writing, before licensing changes. Coverage is the phase gate, not a hope.
What does the ordinary tier run on afterwards?
The OpenTelemetry Collector under OpAMP fleet control, feeding an open source time series database you own, with alerts and dashboards as code in your repositories. No per-host or per-agent license anywhere in that path, and no lock-in to whichever store we build on.
Why is the review free?
Because the drawing is how you judge us. You see your own architecture, your waste and your options before you spend anything, and you keep the drawing whatever you decide. No system access, no obligation.
Are you a reseller for a vendor?
Yes, for certain vendors’ software. We are also the delivery partner and integrator on custom projects, directly or alongside your systems integrator. The pipeline subscription is in your name, bought from the vendor, its channel or through Logmetry where we resell it, and priced on its own line. We recommend what fits your business problem, even when that means changing nothing, and no SIEM or APM vendor pays us to recommend it.
What if the savings don’t hold on our data?
You see it measured before you commit. The two-week proof of value runs on your noisiest source, with success criteria signed before it starts, measured in your SIEM’s own license usage view. At least 20% less into your SIEM, every alert kept, proved on your data.
See your Dynatrace estate drawn, with the costs, before you spend anything
Run by a lead architect with 26 years in monitoring and observability. No system access, no charge, no obligation.
Free. No system access. No obligation. You keep the drawing.
What you get
- Your architecture today, drawn
- The waste map
- Costs before and after, with estimates
- Your target architecture
- Options for your business problem
What it costsNothing