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Elastic Stack
Elastic Stack: Search, Observability, and Security Solutions
Papertrail
Cloud-Hosted Log Management
As of 30 August 2026, Papertrail is free to use. Papertrail is a modern log management solution that provides real-time tail and search capabilities. Softwr lists it under Logging. Papertrail is made by Papertrail (Solarwinds), launched in 2011, available on Web, API.
Overview
What Papertrail does
Papertrail is a modern log management solution that provides real-time tail and search capabilities.
What people use it for
- Aggregating syslog and application logs from many hosts into one searchable stream
- Tail-and-search style troubleshooting during incidents
- Long-term log archiving to Amazon S3 for later analysis
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 Papertrail.
- Log Observability starts at $5.00 per GB per month
- Usage beyond the plan volume is billed at a 30% higher price per GB and is capped at 200% extra
- Transferred volume is measured as message length plus 50 bytes of metadata per message, so metadata counts against the quota
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Papertrail
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.
- PapertrailvsDatadog Logs
Datadog Logs: Log Management and Analytics
- PapertrailvsNew Relic
New Relic: Observability made simple
- PapertrailvsCoralogix
Coralogix: Continuous Log Insights and Visibility
Pricing
What Papertrail costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- Log aggregation
- Real-time tail
- Saved searches
Capabilities
Features
Log aggregation
Real-time tail
Saved searches
System alerts
API
Integration with API
Webhooks
Integration with Webhooks
REST
Integration with REST
Web support
Available on web
Api support
Available on api
Behind it
Who makes Papertrail
- Company
- Papertrail (Solarwinds)
- Based in
- United States
Keep looking
Where to go from Papertrail
- Papertrail alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Papertrail pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Papertrail 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 Papertrail with
- Elastic Stack
- Datadog Logs
- New Relic
- Coralogix
- AppDynamics
- Axiom
- Humio
- Logz.io
- Raygun
- Rollbar
- InfluxDB
- Sumo Logic
- Timber
- Traceloop
- Uptime.com
- Vector
- Elastic
- Telegraf
Other Logging software
Continuous Log Insights and Visibility
Free, then $0.42/GB (logs ingestion)10 researched notesPurpose-built time series database for metrics and events
Free, then $0.0025/MB ingested12 researched notesLLM reliability platform with open-source observability and evaluation
Free plan10 researched notesWebsite monitoring and uptime checker with 80+ global monitoring points
10 researched notesA Lightweight and Ultra-Fast Tool for Building Observability Pipelines
Free plan9 researched notesThe Plugin-Driven Server Agent for Collecting and Reporting Metrics
Free plan10 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Papertrail, 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 Papertrail
Papertrail alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Papertrail pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Papertrail
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Papertrail badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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