Azure Monitorvs
Elastic Stack
Elastic Stack: Search, Observability, and Security Solutions
Azure Monitor
Azure's Monitoring and Diagnostics Service
As of 30 August 2026, Azure Monitor is free to use. Azure Monitor maximizes the availability and performance of applications and services. Softwr lists it under Logging. Azure Monitor is made by Microsoft Azure, launched in 2010, available on Web, API.
Overview
What Azure Monitor does
Azure Monitor maximizes the availability and performance of applications and services.
What people use it for
- Collecting logs and metrics from Azure resources
- Alerting on metric thresholds and log queries
- Application performance monitoring through Application Insights
- Long-term log retention for compliance
- Querying operational data with KQL
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Azure Monitor.
- Billed per GB ingested across three separate log plans, Auxiliary, Basic and Analytics, so the plan chosen changes the rate as much as the volume does
- Only the first 5 GB a month of Analytics logs is free per billing account
- Retention beyond the base period is charged per GB per month, up to 2 years interactive and 12 years long term
- Log queries and search jobs are billed per GB scanned, so investigating an incident costs money
- Alert rules are billed per time series for metrics and by execution frequency for logs
- The pricing page shows placeholders rather than rates until a region and currency are chosen
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Azure Monitor
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Azure MonitorvsDatadog Logs
Datadog Logs: Log Management and Analytics
- Azure MonitorvsNew Relic
New Relic: Observability made simple
- Azure MonitorvsCoralogix
Coralogix: Continuous Log Insights and Visibility
Pricing
What Azure Monitor costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- Log collection
- Metrics collection
- Alerts and notifications
Capabilities
Features
Log collection
Metrics collection
Alerts and notifications
Custom dashboards
API
Integration with API
Webhooks
Integration with Webhooks
REST
Integration with REST
Web support
Available on web
Api support
Available on api
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
How does Azure Monitor billing work?
Billing is based on data volume ingested into Azure Monitor. Additional charges apply separately for alerts, notifications, web tests, and data export. Activity log and platform metrics are automatically collected with an Azure subscription.
SourceWhat savings are available with Azure Monitor?
Capacity reservations offer up to 36% savings compared to standard pay-as-you-go pricing when you commit to reserved capacity upfront.
SourceIs there a free tier for Azure Monitor?
No dedicated free tier exists. Activity log and platform metrics are automatically collected with an Azure subscription, but detailed monitoring requires additional configuration and associated costs.
SourceBehind it
Who makes Azure Monitor
- Company
- Microsoft Azure
- Based in
- United States
Keep looking
Where to go from Azure Monitor
- Azure Monitor alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Azure Monitor pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Azure Monitor badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Logging softwareThe full category
- Best Logging softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Logging software for
Compare Azure Monitor with
- Elastic Stack
- New Relic
- Datadog Logs
- Coralogix
- Cronitor
- Dynatrace
- Airbrake
- AppDynamics
- Honeybadger
- Raygun
- Retrace
- Rollbar
- Sematext
- Splunk Cloud
- Stackdriver
- Elastic APM
- Retrace
- Splunk Enterprise
Other Logging software
Continuous Log Insights and Visibility
Free, then $0.42/GB (logs ingestion)10 researched notesMonitoring for cron jobs, websites, and background tasks
Free, then $2/monitor/month11 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Azure Monitor, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Azure Monitor
Azure Monitor alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Azure Monitor pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Azure Monitor
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Azure Monitor badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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