Introduction
Sumo Logic has built a solid reputation as a cloud-native analytics and security platform. Its machine learning-powered log reduction, built-in SIEM capabilities, and compliance frameworks have made it a go-to choice for organizations that need log analytics alongside security operations. But there is a recurring complaint that surfaces in virtually every renewal conversation, and it is driving teams to explore sumo logic alternatives: the cost.
Sumo Logic's credit-based pricing model is notoriously difficult to predict and optimize. At 100 GB per day of log ingestion, annual costs routinely land between $150,000 and $250,000, depending on retention, feature tiers, and credit consumption patterns. For teams that primarily need observability rather than SIEM, that spend is difficult to justify when alternatives exist that deliver comparable or superior monitoring capabilities at a fraction of the price.
This guide compares five Sumo Logic alternatives that deliver real observability, covering logs, metrics, and traces, without the budget anxiety. We break down architecture, pricing, and migration paths so you can make an informed decision.
Why Teams Are Leaving Sumo Logic
Before evaluating alternatives, it is worth understanding the specific pain points that drive teams to look elsewhere. These are not hypothetical concerns; they are the reasons engineering leaders cite most frequently.
Unpredictable Credit-Based Pricing
Sumo Logic's pricing model is built around credits rather than straightforward per-GB or per-host fees. Credits are consumed differently depending on the feature: log ingestion, metrics ingest, trace ingest, storage, and analytics each burn credits at different rates. This makes forecasting difficult. Teams regularly report bill surprises when a usage spike, a new data source, or an expanded retention window consumes credits faster than projected. At enterprise scale, the opacity of credit consumption creates budgeting headaches that per-GB pricing models avoid entirely.
No Self-Hosted Option
Sumo Logic is SaaS-only. There is no self-hosted deployment model. For organizations with data sovereignty requirements, regulatory constraints, or security postures that mandate telemetry data stays within their own VPC, this is a hard disqualifier. All logs, metrics, and traces must flow to Sumo Logic's cloud infrastructure. You do not control the underlying storage, encryption keys, or physical data location beyond region selection.
Data Lock-in
Migrating away from Sumo Logic means rebuilding dashboards, alerts, scheduled searches, and parsing rules from scratch. Sumo Logic's query language, while capable, is proprietary. Years of institutional knowledge encoded in saved searches and monitors becomes worthless on a different platform. The longer you stay, the more expensive the exit becomes. Exporting raw data at scale for migration is cumbersome and rate-limited, further raising the switching cost.
Complexity for Pure Observability
Sumo Logic was designed with security analytics as a primary use case. If your team needs observability (logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, alerts) but does not use SIEM, compliance dashboards, or Cloud SOAR, you are paying for capabilities you do not use. The platform's breadth becomes overhead when your requirements are focused on operational monitoring and troubleshooting.
Limited OpenTelemetry Integration
While Sumo Logic supports OpenTelemetry data ingestion, its ecosystem was built around proprietary collectors and installed sources. Native OTLP support exists but is not the primary ingestion path. Teams that have standardized on OpenTelemetry for vendor-neutral instrumentation often find the integration less seamless than platforms built OTel-first.
Quick Comparison: 5 Sumo Logic Alternatives
| Feature | Parseable | Grafana Cloud | Datadog | SigNoz | Elastic Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Est. Annual Cost (100 GB/day) | ~$13,500 | ~$65,000-$90,000 | ~$150,000-$200,000 | ~$110,000 (cloud) | ~$80,000-$150,000 |
| Deployment | Self-hosted + Cloud | SaaS + Self-hosted | SaaS only | Self-hosted + Cloud | SaaS + Self-hosted |
| Storage Backend | S3 / Object Store (Parquet) | Loki/Mimir/Tempo | Proprietary | ClickHouse | Elasticsearch |
| Query Language | SQL | PromQL / LogQL / TraceQL | Proprietary | ClickHouse SQL | KQL / Lucene |
| Logs | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Metrics | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Traces | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (APM) |
| Open Source | Yes (AGPL) | Partial (AGPL) | No | Yes (MIT/AGPL) | Partial (SSPL) |
| OTel Native | Yes (OTLP) | Via collectors | Supported | Yes (OTLP) | Supported |
| Data Sovereignty | Full (self-host) | Partial | None | Full (self-host) | Partial |
1. Parseable - Best Overall Sumo Logic Alternative
Parseable is a unified observability platform that handles logs, metrics, events, and traces (MELT) through a single binary backed by S3-compatible object storage. Where Sumo Logic charges six figures for cloud-hosted log analytics, Parseable delivers equivalent observability capabilities at roughly 10% of the cost, with full data sovereignty.
Architecture That Eliminates Complexity
Parseable's architecture is radically simple. A single Rust binary handles ingestion, storage, querying, and visualization. The only external dependency is an S3-compatible object store: AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, MinIO, or any S3-compatible backend. Data is stored in Apache Parquet columnar format, which provides excellent compression (80-90% reduction) and fast analytical queries via Apache Arrow DataFusion.
There are no Elasticsearch clusters to manage. No ClickHouse shards to rebalance. No Kafka brokers to keep alive. The single-binary design means a production-grade Parseable deployment can be running in under five minutes with less than 50 MB of RAM. Compare this to Sumo Logic's opaque multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure that you cannot inspect, customize, or control.
Full MELT Observability
Unlike Sumo Logic, which started as a log analytics and SIEM platform and added metrics and traces later, Parseable was designed from the ground up as a unified MELT observability platform. Logs, metrics, events, and traces are all first-class citizens, stored in the same columnar format, queried with the same SQL interface, and correlated natively.
When investigating an incident, you can move from a metric anomaly to the related traces to the specific log lines in a single workflow. Cross-signal correlation is a SQL JOIN, not a context switch between different tools or query languages.
Native OTLP Endpoint
Parseable provides a native OTLP (OpenTelemetry Protocol) endpoint for ingesting logs, metrics, and traces. Point your existing OpenTelemetry Collectors at Parseable and start ingesting immediately. No proprietary agents, no vendor-specific SDKs, no installed sources to manage. This is a significant advantage over Sumo Logic's collector-centric ingestion model.
SQL Query Interface
Parseable uses standard SQL as its query language, powered by Apache Arrow DataFusion. Every engineer on your team already knows SQL. There is no proprietary query language to learn, no Sumo Logic-specific syntax to memorize, and no institutional knowledge that evaporates if you switch platforms.
SELECT host, level, count(*) as error_count
FROM application_logs
WHERE level = 'error' AND p_timestamp > NOW() - INTERVAL '1 hour'
GROUP BY host, level
ORDER BY error_count DESCAI-Native Analysis
Parseable includes AI-native analysis capabilities that help teams surface anomalies, correlate events, and reduce mean time to resolution. For organizations running AI and LLM workloads, Parseable provides purpose-built observability for inference pipelines, coding agents, and model performance, a rapidly growing requirement that Sumo Logic does not address with the same depth.
Cost Breakdown: Parseable vs. Sumo Logic
| Volume | Parseable (S3 Storage) | Sumo Logic |
|---|---|---|
| 10 GB/day | ~$1,350/year | ~$25,000-$40,000/year |
| 100 GB/day | ~$13,500/year | ~$150,000-$250,000/year |
| 500 GB/day | ~$67,500/year | ~$500,000+/year |
| 1 TB/day | ~$135,000/year | ~$900,000+/year |
Parseable Cloud Pricing: For teams that prefer managed infrastructure, Parseable Cloud starts at $0.37/GB ingested with 30-day retention, minimum $29/month. No infrastructure to manage, no S3 bills to track, no compute to provision.
For self-hosted deployments, cost is dominated by S3 storage at ~$0.023/GB/month, with Parquet compression reducing actual stored volume by 80-90%. There are no per-host fees, no credit calculations, no retention surcharges. You pay your cloud provider's standard object storage rates, and that is the bill.
Best for: Organizations that want full MELT observability at a fraction of Sumo Logic's cost. Teams that need data sovereignty and self-hosted deployment. Engineering organizations that value operational simplicity and SQL-based querying.
Links: GitHub | Documentation | Parseable Cloud | Book a Demo
2. Grafana Cloud - Best for Dashboard-Centric Teams
Grafana Cloud is Grafana Labs' managed observability platform that bundles Loki (logs), Mimir (metrics), Tempo (traces), and Grafana (visualization) into a single SaaS offering. For teams already invested in the Grafana ecosystem, it provides a natural migration path away from Sumo Logic with best-in-class dashboarding.
Strengths
Grafana's visualization layer is unmatched. The dashboard builder, plugin ecosystem, and community-contributed panels provide more flexibility and depth than any other observability platform. Grafana Cloud manages the operational complexity of running Loki, Mimir, and Tempo, which is significant because self-hosting this stack at scale requires expertise across three separate distributed systems.
The free tier is genuinely useful: 50 GB of logs, 10,000 active metrics series, and 50 GB of traces per month. For small teams evaluating alternatives, you can run a meaningful proof-of-concept without spending anything. Grafana Cloud also supports Prometheus remote write, which means existing Prometheus deployments can ship metrics directly without re-instrumentation.
Alerting is mature, with Grafana Alerting providing unified notification workflows across all signal types. The Explore view enables ad hoc investigation, and the recently improved correlations feature helps connect logs, metrics, and traces during incident response.
Limitations
Grafana Cloud requires learning three different query languages: PromQL for metrics, LogQL for logs, and TraceQL for traces. Context-switching between query syntaxes during an incident slows investigation. For teams coming from Sumo Logic's single query language, this fragmentation can feel like a step backward.
Pricing at higher volumes scales quickly. Log ingestion beyond the free tier costs $0.50 per GB, and metrics pricing is based on active series and data points ingested. At 100 GB per day of logs with reasonable metrics and trace volume, annual costs land between $65,000 and $90,000. That is cheaper than Sumo Logic, but still significant compared to self-hosted alternatives.
Loki's label-based indexing trades full-text search capability for cost efficiency. If your workflow depends on fast grep-style searches across log content, Loki's performance may not match what you are used to with Sumo Logic's indexed search.
Cost: Free tier with 50 GB logs/month. Paid plans at $0.50/GB for logs beyond the free tier. At 100 GB/day, expect $65,000-$90,000 annually depending on metrics and trace volume.
Best for: Teams already using Grafana dashboards that want a managed stack. Organizations where visualization quality is the top priority.
3. Datadog - Best for All-in-One SaaS Observability
Datadog is the market-leading SaaS observability platform. With 750+ integrations, polished UI, and comprehensive feature coverage spanning APM, infrastructure monitoring, log management, RUM, synthetics, and security, it is the benchmark for fully managed observability. If your objection to Sumo Logic is feature depth rather than cost, Datadog warrants evaluation.
Strengths
Datadog's integration catalog is the largest in the industry. Whatever is in your stack, Datadog has a pre-built integration with auto-discovered dashboards and monitors. The UI is polished and intuitive, with a consistent experience across all product areas. Bits AI provides intelligent incident summarization and remediation suggestions.
APM capabilities are significantly deeper than Sumo Logic's. Code-level profiling, continuous profiling, dynamic instrumentation, and error tracking provide visibility that Sumo Logic's APM offering cannot match. For teams where application performance monitoring is a primary use case, Datadog delivers.
The fully managed model means zero operational overhead. No infrastructure to provision, no databases to tune, no upgrades to coordinate. You ship data, and Datadog handles everything else.
Limitations
Cost is Datadog's primary drawback, and it is significant. Per-host pricing ($15/host/month for infrastructure, $31/host/month for APM), per-GB log ingestion fees ($0.10/GB), custom metrics charges, indexed span fees, and retention surcharges compound to produce bills that frequently exceed Sumo Logic's already high pricing. At 100 GB per day with a typical host count, expect $150,000 to $200,000 or more annually.
There is no self-hosted option. All data flows to Datadog's cloud, which creates the same data sovereignty concerns as Sumo Logic. Migrating away from Datadog is equally painful: proprietary dashboards, alerts, and query syntax do not port to other platforms.
For a deeper analysis, see our Datadog alternatives comparison.
Cost: Log management at 100 GB/day with 15-day retention runs approximately $150,000-$200,000/year when all fee components are included.
Best for: Organizations that prioritize feature breadth and managed operations over cost, and have the budget to match.
4. SigNoz - Best for OpenTelemetry-Native Monitoring
SigNoz is an open-source observability platform built from the ground up on OpenTelemetry and ClickHouse. It provides unified logs, metrics, and traces with a modern UI that makes the transition from commercial platforms feel familiar. For teams that have standardized on OpenTelemetry and want an open-source backend, SigNoz is a strong contender.
Strengths
SigNoz's OpenTelemetry-native design means there are no proprietary agents to install. You use standard OTel SDKs and collectors, and SigNoz ingests OTLP data directly. This is a cleaner instrumentation story than Sumo Logic's installed sources and collection agents. The ClickHouse backend provides fast columnar queries over large datasets, with good compression and query performance for time-series observability data.
The UI is modern and well-designed, with unified views of traces, metrics, and logs with built-in correlation. Service maps help teams visualize microservice dependencies. The exceptions monitoring module provides structured error tracking. For teams migrating from Sumo Logic who want a similar all-in-one experience without the cost, SigNoz delivers a familiar workflow.
SigNoz Cloud provides a managed option for teams that do not want to operate ClickHouse infrastructure. Pricing starts at $0.3 per GB ingested for logs, which is meaningfully cheaper than Sumo Logic's credit-based model.
Limitations
ClickHouse, while powerful, requires expertise to operate at scale. Cluster management, replication, shard rebalancing, and storage optimization are non-trivial operational tasks. If you self-host SigNoz, you inherit this complexity. The ecosystem is smaller than established players like Grafana or Datadog, which means fewer pre-built dashboards and community integrations. Some enterprise features (SSO, audit logs) are gated behind the paid tier.
Compared to Parseable's S3-native storage, ClickHouse's compute and storage requirements result in higher infrastructure costs at equivalent data volumes. SigNoz Cloud at 100 GB/day runs approximately $110,000/year, which is cheaper than Sumo Logic but still a material expense.
Cost: Free self-hosted. SigNoz Cloud at $0.3/GB for logs. At 100 GB/day, cloud costs are approximately $110,000/year.
Best for: Teams standardized on OpenTelemetry that want an open-source unified observability platform with a polished UI.
5. Elastic Cloud - Best for Full-Text Search and Security
Elastic Cloud is the managed version of the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, APM). Its strength lies in full-text search powered by Apache Lucene, which makes it exceptionally good at finding specific log entries across massive datasets. For teams where search capability is paramount, or where security analytics (Elastic SIEM) is a core use case alongside observability, Elastic Cloud provides a transition path away from Sumo Logic that preserves full-text search workflows.
Strengths
Elastic's full-text search remains best-in-class. If your team relies heavily on grep-style ad hoc searching across unstructured log data, Elasticsearch's inverted index delivers fast results across large datasets. Kibana provides mature visualization and dashboarding, with a rich ecosystem of pre-built dashboards for common data sources.
Elastic Security (formerly Elastic SIEM) provides detection rules, case management, and investigation workflows that compete directly with Sumo Logic's Cloud SIEM. For teams that use Sumo Logic primarily for security analytics, Elastic Cloud preserves that capability. The Elastic Agent unifies data collection for logs, metrics, and security events.
Elastic Observability now covers APM, infrastructure monitoring, and synthetic monitoring alongside log management. The platform has evolved from a pure search engine to a broader observability and security suite.
Limitations
Operating Elasticsearch at scale is notoriously resource-intensive. Each node requires substantial RAM, CPU, and fast SSD storage. On Elastic Cloud, these infrastructure costs translate directly into higher managed service fees. At 100 GB/day, expect annual costs between $80,000 and $150,000 depending on node sizing, retention, and replica configuration.
The SSPL (Server Side Public License) creates uncertainty for organizations that relied on Elastic's original Apache 2.0 licensing. KQL (Kibana Query Language) is another proprietary query language to learn, though it is simpler than Sumo Logic's query syntax. JVM tuning, shard management, and index lifecycle policies require dedicated expertise.
For more options, see our open-source log management tools guide.
Cost: Elastic Cloud starts at ~$95/month for basic configurations. At 100 GB/day, expect $80,000-$150,000/year depending on configuration.
Best for: Teams that need best-in-class full-text search or are migrating Sumo Logic SIEM workflows to an alternative security analytics platform.
Sumo Logic Pricing Breakdown vs. Parseable S3 Costs
Understanding the true cost difference requires looking beyond list prices. Here is a detailed breakdown at 100 GB/day, the volume where pricing disparities become most visible.
Sumo Logic: What You Actually Pay
Sumo Logic's credit-based pricing makes exact calculations difficult, which is part of the problem. A typical Enterprise tier deployment at 100 GB/day includes:
- Log Analytics credits: The bulk of credit consumption goes toward log ingestion and analytics. At enterprise rates, this translates to roughly $120,000-$180,000/year.
- Metrics ingest: If you send infrastructure metrics alongside logs, additional credit consumption adds $10,000-$30,000/year depending on cardinality.
- Trace ingest: APM and distributed tracing consume credits at a different rate, adding another $10,000-$25,000/year.
- Storage and retention: Extending retention beyond the default window consumes additional credits. 90-day retention at 100 GB/day adds $15,000-$30,000/year.
- Overages: Exceeding committed credit volumes triggers overage charges at premium rates.
Total estimated annual cost: $150,000-$250,000
Parseable on S3: What You Actually Pay
Parseable's cost model is transparent because it is based on cloud infrastructure you control:
- S3 storage: 100 GB/day with 80-90% Parquet compression = ~10-20 GB stored per day. At $0.023/GB/month for S3 Standard, annual storage cost for 365 days of retention is approximately $840-$1,680/year.
- S3 API costs: PUT/GET requests for ingestion and queries add roughly $500-$1,500/year depending on query patterns.
- Compute: A Parseable instance handling 100 GB/day requires modest compute. A c5.xlarge (4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM) on-demand costs ~$1,500/year. With reserved pricing, roughly $900/year.
- Data transfer: Ingress to S3 is free. Egress for queries is minimal since Parseable pushes down predicates and reads only required columns.
Total estimated annual cost: ~$3,500-$5,500/year for storage and compute
Adding operational overhead, monitoring for the Parseable instance itself, and a buffer for query-heavy workloads, a conservative all-in estimate is $13,500/year, which represents an 90-95% cost reduction compared to Sumo Logic.
The cost advantage compounds with retention. Sumo Logic charges more credits for longer retention. On S3, storing 365 days of compressed data costs pennies per GB per month. You can keep years of telemetry data accessible and queryable for less than what Sumo Logic charges for 30-day retention.
The Parseable Advantage: Why It Is the Best Sumo Logic Replacement
Parseable is not just a cheaper alternative to Sumo Logic. It is an architecturally superior approach to observability that happens to cost 90% less. Here is why.
S3-Native Storage Changes the Economics Permanently
Every other observability platform treats storage as an operational concern that the platform manages internally. Parseable treats storage as a commodity that you own. By writing all telemetry data to S3-compatible object storage in Apache Parquet format, Parseable decouples storage cost from the observability platform entirely.
This has profound implications beyond simple cost savings. Your telemetry data is stored in an open, widely-supported columnar format on storage infrastructure you control. There is no data lock-in because Parquet files on S3 can be read by dozens of tools: Apache Spark, DuckDB, Trino, Athena, BigQuery, or any Parquet-compatible engine. If you ever want to run ad hoc analytics on your observability data using a different tool, you can. The data is yours, in a format the entire data ecosystem understands.
Single Binary Means Zero Operational Overhead
Sumo Logic's managed SaaS model eliminates infrastructure management, but at a steep price premium. Parseable's single-binary architecture achieves nearly the same operational simplicity at a fraction of the cost. Built in Rust with a memory footprint under 50 MB, Parseable deploys as a single process that handles ingestion, storage, querying, and serving the UI. There is no cluster to manage, no JVM to tune, no distributed coordinator to keep alive.
Deploying Parseable on Kubernetes is a single pod. Deploying on a VM is a single binary. Upgrading is replacing one binary. This operational simplicity means you do not need a dedicated platform team to run your observability infrastructure, which is an additional cost saving that does not show up in the storage comparison but materially impacts total cost of ownership.
Full MELT Observability in One Platform
Sumo Logic added metrics and traces to what was originally a log analytics platform. The result is a platform where logs are first-class citizens, but metrics and traces feel like integrations. Parseable was designed from inception as a unified MELT (Metrics, Events, Logs, Traces) observability platform. All four signal types share the same storage format, the same query engine, and the same correlation capabilities.
This architectural unity means cross-signal correlation is a native operation, not an integration. When an alert fires on a metric, you can immediately query the corresponding traces and logs without switching tools, query languages, or mental models. For incident response, this unified view directly reduces mean time to resolution.
SQL Is the Universal Query Language
Sumo Logic's proprietary query language is powerful but creates lock-in and requires training. Parseable uses standard SQL, powered by Apache Arrow DataFusion. SQL is the most widely known query language in the world. Your engineers can write observability queries on day one without specialized training. The institutional knowledge they build is transferable to any SQL-compatible platform, which means you never face a lock-in problem.
Data Sovereignty by Default
With Parseable, your telemetry data lives on your object storage, in your cloud account, in your chosen region. There is no third party that stores, processes, or has access to your operational data. For organizations in regulated industries, those with strict security postures, or teams that simply want to own their data, this is not a nice-to-have. It is a requirement that Sumo Logic cannot fulfill.
Deployment Flexibility
Parseable Cloud is the fastest way to get started — a managed service starting at $0.37/GB ingested ($29/month minimum) at app.parseable.com. For teams that need full infrastructure control, Parseable is also available as a self-hosted deployment with source code on GitHub. You can audit the code for security, contribute features, or fork for custom requirements. There are no proprietary black boxes, no trust-us security claims, and no feature gates that require upgrading to an enterprise tier to unlock observability basics.
Migration Guide: Sumo Logic to Parseable
Migrating from Sumo Logic to Parseable can be done incrementally. You do not need to cut over everything at once.
Step 1: Deploy Parseable
Option 1: Parseable Cloud (Recommended)
Sign up at app.parseable.com — starts at $0.37/GB ingested, free tier available. Get an OTLP endpoint instantly with no infrastructure to manage.
Option 2: Self-Hosted
# Docker quickstart with local storage
docker run -p 8000:8000 \
parseable/parseable:latest \
parseable local-store
# Or use the install script
curl https://sh.parseable.io | shFor production, configure S3-compatible object storage as the backend:
docker run -p 8000:8000 \
-e P_S3_URL=https://s3.amazonaws.com \
-e P_S3_ACCESS_KEY=your-access-key \
-e P_S3_SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key \
-e P_S3_REGION=us-east-1 \
-e P_S3_BUCKET=parseable-data \
parseable/parseable:latest \
parseable s3-storeAccess the Parseable console at http://localhost:8000 with default credentials admin / admin.
Step 2: Set Up OpenTelemetry Collectors
If you are already using OpenTelemetry, point your collectors at Parseable's OTLP endpoint. If you are using Sumo Logic's installed sources, deploy OTel Collectors as a replacement:
# otel-collector-config.yaml
receivers:
filelog:
include: [/var/log/*.log]
otlp:
protocols:
grpc:
endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
http:
endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318
exporters:
otlphttp:
endpoint: "http://parseable-host:8000/v1"
service:
pipelines:
logs:
receivers: [filelog, otlp]
exporters: [otlphttp]
traces:
receivers: [otlp]
exporters: [otlphttp]
metrics:
receivers: [otlp]
exporters: [otlphttp]Step 3: Dual-Ship During Transition
During migration, send data to both Sumo Logic and Parseable simultaneously. This lets you validate that Parseable captures everything you need before decommissioning Sumo Logic:
exporters:
otlphttp/parseable:
endpoint: "http://parseable-host:8000/v1"
otlphttp/sumologic:
endpoint: "https://endpoint.sumologic.com/v1"
service:
pipelines:
logs:
receivers: [filelog]
exporters: [otlphttp/parseable, otlphttp/sumologic]Step 4: Recreate Dashboards and Alerts
Translate your Sumo Logic saved searches and dashboards into Parseable SQL queries. The SQL interface makes this straightforward:
| Sumo Logic Query | Parseable SQL |
|---|---|
_sourceCategory=prod/app error | count by _sourceHost | SELECT host, count(*) FROM app_logs WHERE level = 'error' GROUP BY host |
_sourceCategory=prod/api | timeslice 5m | count by _timeslice | SELECT date_trunc('5 minutes', p_timestamp) AS ts, count(*) FROM api_logs GROUP BY ts ORDER BY ts |
_sourceCategory=prod | where status >= 500 | count | SELECT count(*) FROM access_logs WHERE status >= 500 |
Step 5: Decommission Sumo Logic
Once you have validated data completeness, query performance, and alerting coverage on Parseable, remove the Sumo Logic exporter from your OTel Collector configuration and cancel your Sumo Logic contract. The entire migration can be completed in two to four weeks for most organizations.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best alternative to Sumo Logic?
Parseable is the best overall alternative to Sumo Logic for organizations that want unified MELT observability (logs, metrics, events, traces) at dramatically lower cost. It delivers 80-90% cost savings through S3-native storage, eliminates data lock-in with open Parquet formats, and provides full data sovereignty through self-hosted deployment. For teams that prioritize dashboarding above all else, Grafana Cloud is also a strong option. For a deeper comparison of alternatives in the space, see our Splunk alternatives guide.
How much does Sumo Logic cost per GB?
Sumo Logic uses a credit-based pricing model that makes per-GB calculations opaque. However, working backward from typical enterprise contracts at 100 GB/day, the effective cost ranges from $4 to $7 per GB ingested per year, depending on the tier and features used. This translates to $150,000-$250,000 annually at 100 GB/day. By comparison, Parseable's S3 storage costs approximately $0.28 per GB per year (at $0.023/GB/month), before accounting for 80-90% compression that further reduces actual storage costs.
Can I self-host a Sumo Logic alternative?
Yes. Parseable, SigNoz, and the Grafana Stack (Loki + Prometheus/Mimir + Tempo) all offer self-hosted deployment options. Parseable is the simplest to self-host because it deploys as a single binary with no external dependencies beyond S3-compatible object storage. SigNoz requires managing a ClickHouse cluster. The Grafana Stack requires deploying and managing three separate distributed systems. Datadog and Sumo Logic do not offer self-hosted options.
How does Parseable compare to Sumo Logic for log management?
Parseable surpasses Sumo Logic in several critical areas. Cost: Parseable is approximately 90-95% cheaper at equivalent data volumes, storing compressed Parquet files on S3 instead of Sumo Logic's credit-metered cloud storage. Data ownership: Parseable stores your data on your S3, in an open format you control; Sumo Logic stores it on their infrastructure. Query language: SQL (universally known) versus Sumo Logic's proprietary query language. Deployment: Self-hosted or Parseable Cloud versus SaaS-only. Where Sumo Logic retains advantages is in mature SIEM capabilities, compliance frameworks, and Cloud SOAR, areas where security analytics is the primary requirement rather than operational observability.
Does Parseable support OpenTelemetry?
Yes. Parseable provides a native OTLP (OpenTelemetry Protocol) endpoint that accepts logs, metrics, and traces over HTTP. You can configure the standard OpenTelemetry Collector to export all signal types directly to Parseable without proprietary agents or custom integrations. This makes migration from Sumo Logic straightforward: deploy OTel Collectors as replacements for Sumo Logic's installed sources, point them at Parseable, and your instrumentation remains vendor-neutral.
Is Parseable suitable for enterprise use?
Yes. Parseable is used in production by organizations ranging from startups to enterprises processing terabytes of telemetry data daily. Parseable Cloud provides a managed platform starting at $0.37/GB ingested, with an Enterprise tier (custom pricing, $999/month minimum) that includes SSO/SAML, dedicated support, and custom retention. For teams that prefer self-hosted deployment, the single-binary architecture reduces operational risk (fewer components to fail) and S3 storage provides enterprise-grade durability (11 nines). For enterprise evaluations, book a demo to discuss your specific requirements.
Final Thoughts on Sumo Logic Alternatives
If your Sumo Logic bill has you rethinking your observability strategy, the path forward is straightforward. Parseable gives you full MELT observability, logs, metrics, events, and traces, at 10% of Sumo Logic's cost, with complete data sovereignty and zero vendor lock-in.
- Start with Parseable Cloud — starts at $0.37/GB, free tier available
- Self-hosted deployment — single binary, deploy in 2 minutes
- Read the docs — guides, API reference, and tutorials
- Book a demo — talk to the engineering team


