An ingestion cost is a charge for receiving or writing observability signals into a backend. An agent such as the OpenTelemetry Collector sends metrics, logs, or traces, and providers may bill by samples, spans, or data volume. section 5.6.1 section 8.3.2
A backend bill
A Prometheus-compatible backend might charge per million samples ingested. A tracing provider might charge per gigabyte or number of spans, while sending data from an on-premises environment can add network ingress and transfer charges. At scale, signal volume makes these variable costs material. section 5.6.1 section 8.3.2
Treat ingestion cost as one part of a broader observability bill:
- Separate ingestion from storage and query costs; retention and repeated alert queries create different billing drivers. section 5.6.1
- Estimate network transfer, signal volume, retention, and vendor-specific discounts before selecting a backend. section 8.3.2
