Explanation
Why the waste happens and who it affects.
Defaults may extend retention far beyond what is useful for troubleshooting, performance monitoring, or compliance. This leads to unnecessary storage and indexing costs, particularly in non-production environments or for logs with limited value after a short period. By adjusting log index retention per environment or service, organizations can reduce spend while still meeting compliance and operational needs.
Billing model
The pricing dimensions that drive this cost.
Datadog Log Management bills log ingestion per GB and indexed logs per million events, and the indexed-log price depends on the retention period chosen for each index (for example 3, 7, 15, or 30 days). Longer index retention raises the per-event price whether or not the historical data provides business value. Metrics and APM indexed spans have fixed, plan-defined retention periods, so they are not a per-service retention lever.
How to detect
4 checks to find it in your estate.
- Identify services where default Datadog log retention settings are in place without business justification
- Compare retention length across projects, environments, and service types (for example general, error, and audit logs)
- Validate whether business, compliance, or audit requirements justify keeping logs for the current duration
- Evaluate whether shorter retention windows would still support operational monitoring and troubleshooting needs
How to fix
5 ways to remove the waste.
- Work with stakeholders to align log retention periods with business and compliance requirements
- Reduce retention on log indexes to the minimum necessary for value delivery, routing low-value or non-production logs to shorter-retention indexes
- Implement differentiated retention policies by environment (production vs. non-production) or by log type
- Use exclusion filters to keep low-value logs out of indexes, and use Flex Logs or log archives for data that must be kept longer
- Regularly review retention policies as requirements evolve to avoid reverting to unnecessary defaults
Documentation
Vendor references for pricing and configuration.