# OpenObserve VS Dynatrace

> Tired of Dynatrace lock-in, OneAgent overhead, and surprise DPU billing? OpenObserve offers open standards, flexible deployment, and predictable costs.

Source: https://openobserve.ai/dynatrace-alternative/
Competitor: Dynatrace

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Escape complex DPU billing, proprietary lock-in, and heavyweight OneAgent overhead. Full-stack observability at a fraction of the cost.

- **21,000+** Github Stars
- **9,000+** Companies trust us
- **$0** Per User
- **$0** Per Host

Teams cut their Dynatrace bill 70%–90%. [See your ingest-based pricing →](/pricing/)

*Estimate based on typical OpenObserve customer savings versus DPU, host unit, and DEM unit billing.*

- [Request Demo](/demo/)
- [Start Free](https://cloud.openobserve.ai/web/login)

## Ready to See the Difference?

Get a personalized demo based on your current Dynatrace usage

## Why teams switch from Dynatrace

The many reasons that teams are making the switch

### Full deployment flexibility

SaaS or on-premises, your choice. Dynatrace locks most customers into SaaS unless they sign an enterprise contract.

### Predictable pricing

One simple ingest-based model, no surprises. Dynatrace's mix of DPUs, host units, and DEM units makes your bill nearly impossible to forecast.

### No vendor lock-in

Open standards mean your data, queries, and dashboards are always portable. Dynatrace's DQL and OneAgent make switching painful and expensive.

### No Proprietary Query Language

SQL and PromQL out of the box , no new syntax to learn. Dynatrace locks you into DQL, on their terms.

### Bring your own storage

Store everything on infrastructure you own and control. With Dynatrace, your data lives on their storage, on their terms.

### Reduce Overhead

The OTel Collector adds no bloat , lightweight, vendor-neutral, and fits any stack. Dynatrace's OneAgent adds significant CPU and memory overhead on every host it runs on.

## See how OpenObserve replaces Dynatrace

Get a personalized walkthrough and see how much you'd save moving off Dynatrace's DPU-based billing.

- 30-minute personalized walkthrough
- No credit card required
- See your real migration path from Dynatrace

## Feature Comparison

Modern, full-stack observability

| Feature | Dynatrace | OpenObserve | Reference Links |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Feature parity: logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, alerts, pipelines | ✓ | ✓ | [Logs](/docs/ingestion/logs/), [Metrics](/docs/ingestion/metrics/prometheus/), [Traces](/docs/ingestion/traces/opentelemetry/), [Dashboards](/docs/user-guide/analytics/dashboards/dashboards-in-openobserve/), [Alerts](/docs/user-guide/analytics/alerts/), [Pipelines](/docs/user-guide/data-processing/pipelines/pipelines/) |
| Frontend Monitoring (RUM) | ✓ | ✓ | [Real User Monitoring built-in](/docs/user-guide/data-exploration/rum/setup/) |
| Query language | DQL proprietary | SQL / PromQL | Open standards, zero learning curve |
| Pricing model | DPUs + host units + DEM units | Ingest-based only | [Predictable, scalable cost](/pricing/) |
| OpenTelemetry native | Partial agent-first | ✓ Full | No OneAgent required |
| Self-hosted option | ✗ Enterprise contract | ✓ Single binary | Deploy in minutes (Free 50 GB/day Enterprise license) |
| Per-seat cost | High role-based pricing | $0 unlimited users | No seat taxes |
| Bring your own storage | ✗ | ✓ S3, GCS, Azure, MinIO | Full data sovereignty |
| Open source | ✗ | ✓ AGPL-3.0 | [21,000+ GitHub star](https://github.com/openobserve/openobserve) |
| Data format | Proprietary | Apache Parquet (open) | No format lock-in |

## Migrating from Dyantrace

Switching is easier than you think

### Replace OneAgent with the OTel Collector

Deploy the OpenTelemetry Collector alongside your existing OneAgent setup. Configure exporters to point to OpenObserve. Your application code stays completely untouched no re-instrumentation required. Run both systems in parallel while you validate data parity and build confidence.

### Translate DQL queries to SQL and rebuild dashboards

Convert your Dynatrace DQL queries to standard SQL using our migration guides. DQL's FETCH, FILTER, and SUMMARIZE constructs map closely to SQL SELECT, WHERE, and GROUP BY. Rebuild critical dashboards in OpenObserve's modern UI. Our team can help accelerate this for complex environments.

### Complete cutover and optimize costs

Gradually shift production workloads to OpenObserve, starting with non-critical services. Monitor performance, validate alerts, and decomission Dynatrace hosts progressively. Watch your observability bill drop often by 70–90% while retaining full visibility.

> OpenObserve has proven to be a reliable solution. The developers get comfortable with it really fast, and it helps us diagnose issues much more efficiently.
> - Florent Clairambault, CTO, Stonal

- [Talk to our migration team](/demo/)
- [Read Migration Stories](/customer-stories/)

## Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about switching from Dynatrace to OpenObserve

### Does OpenObserve replace Dynatrace's full APM and distributed tracing?

Yes. OpenObserve provides first-class distributed tracing via OpenTelemetry, including service maps, span-level drill-down, latency percentiles, and error rate tracking. For the core APM use cases covering 90%+ of teams, OpenObserve is a complete replacement. Some highly specialized Dynatrace AI features (Davis AIOps anomaly detection) may require supplementary tooling, but OpenObserve's alerting covers the vast majority of use cases.

### How does OpenObserve's pricing compare to Dynatrace's DPU model?

Dynatrace's DPU (Davis Platform Units) model, combined with host units and DEM units, makes cost forecasting extremely difficult and teams frequently encounter bill shock. OpenObserve uses simple ingest-based pricing with no per-seat charges, no per-host charges, and no opaque unit conversions. You pay for data ingested, period. Most teams see 70–90% cost reductions after switching.

### We rely heavily on Dynatrace's OneAgent auto-discovery. Is there an equivalent?

The OpenTelemetry Collector supports auto-instrumentation for all major languages and frameworks, and the OTel operator for Kubernetes handles injection automatically. You lose the proprietary black-box magic of OneAgent, but gain full visibility into what's being collected and the freedom to run on any infrastructure without per-host licensing.

### What happens to our historical Dynatrace data after migration?

Your historical data stays in Dynatrace as long as your subscription and retention windows are active. If you need history in OpenObserve, you can export it from Dynatrace and re-ingest it. Most teams keep a Dynatrace read-only account during the transition period, then let it expire once the new baseline is established.

### Is OpenObserve enterprise-ready?

Yes. OpenObserve is SOC 2 Type II certified and ISO 27001 compliant, serving thousands of deployments including Fortune 100 enterprises; the largest single customer ingests more than 4 PB of data per day, with individual clusters sustaining over 1 PB/day. Enterprise features include:
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
- SAML / OIDC SSO
- Sensitive data masking
- Audit logs
- Dedicated support SLAs

### How long does a typical Dynatrace to OpenObserve migration take?

Teams already on or willing to adopt OpenTelemetry can start receiving data in OpenObserve within hours. Full migration, including dashboard recreation and alert translation, typically takes one to three weeks depending on environment complexity. Our migration team can help accelerate this for large, complex deployments.

## OpenObserve: the open-source Dynatrace alternative

An open-source, OpenTelemetry-native unified observability platform, without DPU billing or OneAgent overhead. Stonal cut observability costs 70%–90% after switching from Dynatrace. Also evaluating other tools? See how OpenObserve compares to [Datadog](/datadog-alternative/), [New Relic](/newrelic-alternative/), [AppDynamics](/appdynamics-alternative/).

- No DPU, host unit, or per-seat billing
- OpenTelemetry-native: no proprietary OneAgent
- Deployment flexibility: cloud or self-hosted