Custom Metrics Billing

The number of custom metrics from COUNT and RATE is calculated with the same logic.

The number of unique tag value combinations submitted for a RATE metric with this tagging scheme is four:

• host:A, endpoint:X, status:200
• host:B, endpoint:X, status:200
• host:B, endpoint:X, status:400
• host:B, endpoint:Y, status:200

This results in request.Latency reporting four custom metrics.

Effect of adding tags

Adding tags may not result in more custom metrics. Your count of custom metrics usually scales with the most granular or detailed tag. Suppose you are measuring temperature in the US, and you have tagged your temperature metric by country and region. You submit the following to Datadog:

Suppose you wanted to add the tag city which has three values: NYC, Miami, and Orlando. Adding this tag increases the number of custom metrics as it provides more detail and granularity to your dataset as shown below:

The count of custom metrics reporting from temperature scales with the most granular tag, city.

Suppose you also wanted to tag your temperature metric by state (which has two values: NY and Florida). This means you are tagging temperature by the tags: country, region, state, and city. Adding the state tag doesn’t increase the level of granularity already present in your dataset provided by the city tag.

To obtain the temperature in Florida, you can recombine the custom metrics of:

• temperature{country:USA, state:Florida, city:Orlando}
• temperature{country:USA, state:Florida, city:Miami}

Note: Reordering tag values doesn’t add uniqueness. The following combinations are the same custom metric:

• temperature{country:USA, state:Florida, city:Miami}
• temperature{state:Florida, city:Miami, country:USA}

Configure tags and aggregations with Metrics without Limits™

Custom metrics volumes can be impacted by configuring tags and aggregations using Metrics without Limits™. Metrics without Limits™ decouples ingestion costs from indexing costs – so you can continue sending Datadog all of your data (everything is ingested) and you can specify an allowlist of tags you’d want to remain queryable in the Datadog platform. Given the volume of data Datadog is ingesting for your configured metrics now differs from the smaller, remaining volume you’ve indexed, you’ll see two distinct volumes on your Usage page as well as the Metrics Summary page.

• Ingested Custom Metrics: The original volume of custom metrics based on the all ingested tags (sent via code)
• Indexed Custom Metrics: The volume of custom metrics that remains queryable in the Datadog platform (based on any Metrics without Limits™ configurations)

Note: Only configured metrics contribute to your Ingested custom metrics volume. If a metric is not configured with Metrics without Limits™, you’re only charged for its indexed custom metrics volume.

When are you charged for ingested vs indexed custom metrics?

For metrics not configured with Metrics without Limits™, you pay for indexed custom metrics.

For metrics configured with Metrics without Limits™ (tags/aggregations are configured), you pay for ingested custom metrics and indexed custom metrics.

Suppose you wanted to use Metrics without Limits™ to reduce the size of your request.Latency metric by keeping only the endpoint and status tags. This results in the following three unique tag combinations:

• endpoint:X, status:200
• endpoint:X, status:400
• endpoint:Y, status:200

As a result of the tag configuration, request.Latency reporting a total of 3 indexed custom metrics . Based on the original tags sent on this metric, the original ingested custom metrics volume of request.Latency is 4 ingested custom metrics.

By default, Datadog stores the most frequently queried aggregation combination depending on the metric’s type to preserve the mathematical accuracy of your configured metric’s query.

• Configured counts/rates are queryable with time/space aggregations of SUM

You can opt-in to more aggregations should they be valuable for your queries - your number of indexed custom metrics scales with the number of enabled aggregations.

Learn more about Metrics without Limits™.

The number of unique tag value combinations submitted for a GAUGE metric with this tagging scheme is four:

• host:A, endpoint:X, status:200
• host:B, endpoint:X, status:200
• host:B, endpoint:X, status:400
• host:B, endpoint:Y, status:200

This results in request.Latency reporting four custom metrics.

Effect of adding tags

Adding tags may not result in more custom metrics. Your count of custom metrics usually scales with the most granular or detailed tag. Suppose you are measuring temperature in the US, and you have tagged your temperature metric by country and region. You submit the following to Datadog:

Suppose you wanted to add the tag city which has three values: NYC, Miami, and Orlando. Adding this tag increases the number of custom metrics as it provides more detail and granularity to your dataset as shown below:

The count of custom metrics reporting from temperature scales with the most granular tag, city.

Suppose you also wanted to tag your temperature metric by state (which has two values: NY and Florida). This means you are tagging temperature by country, region, state, and city. Adding the state tag doesn’t increase the level of granularity already present in your dataset provided by the city tag.

To obtain the temperature in Florida, you can recombine the custom metrics of:

• temperature{country:USA, state:Florida, city:Orlando}
• temperature{country:USA, state:Florida, city:Miami}

Note: Reordering tag values doesn’t add uniqueness. The following combinations are the same custom metric:

• temperature{country:USA, state:Florida, city:Miami}
• temperature{state:Florida, city:Miami, country:USA}

Configure tags and aggregations with Metrics without Limits™

Custom metrics volumes can be impacted by configuring tags and aggregations using [Metrics without Limits™][4]. Metrics without Limits™ decouples ingestion costs from indexing costs – so you can continue sending Datadog all of your data (everything is ingested) and you can specify an allowlist of tags you want to remain queryable in the Datadog platform. Given the volume of data Datadog is ingesting for your configured metrics now differs from the smaller, remaining volume you’ve indexed, you’ll see two distinct volumes on your Usage page as well as the Metrics Summary page.

• Ingested Custom Metrics: The original volume of custom metrics based on the all ingested tags (sent via code)
• Indexed Custom Metrics: The volume of custom metrics that remains queryable in the Datadog platform (based on any Metrics without Limits™ configurations)

Note: Only configured metrics contribute to your Ingested custom metrics volume. If a metric is not configured with Metrics without Limits™, you’re only charged for its indexed custom metrics volume.

When are you charged for ingested vs indexed custom metrics?

For metrics not configured with Metrics without Limits™, you pay for for indexed custom metrics.

For metrics configured with Metrics without Limits™ (tags/aggregations are configured), you pay for ingested custom metrics and indexed custom metrics.

By default, Datadog stores the most frequently queried aggregation combination depending on the metric’s type to preserve the mathematical accuracy of your configured metric’s query as listed below:

• Configured gauges are queryable in time/space aggregations of AVG/AVG

You can opt-in to more aggregations should they be valuable for your queries - your number of indexed custom metrics scales with the number of enabled aggregations.

Learn more about Metrics without Limits™.

A HISTOGRAM metric generates by default five custom metrics for each unique combination of metric name and tag values to support the Agent-side aggregations max, median, avg, 95pc, and count. Learn more about HISTOGRAM metric type.

The number of unique tag value combinations submitted for a HISTOGRAM metric with this tagging scheme is four:

• host:A, endpoint:X, status:200
• host:B, endpoint:X, status:200
• host:B, endpoint:X, status:400
• host:B, endpoint:Y, status:200

By default, the Agent generates five custom metrics for each of the original four unique tag value combinations to account for each Agent-side aggregations enabled: avg, count, median, 95percentile, and max. Consequently, request.Latency reports a total of 4*5 = 20 custom metrics.

Note: Adding aggregations to your HISTOGRAM metrics increases the number of distinct custom metrics reported. Removing aggregations decreases the number of custom metrics reported.

• Configure which aggregation you want to send to Datadog with the histogram_aggregates parameter in your datadog.yaml configuration file. By default, only max, median, avg, and count aggregations are sent out to Datadog. sum and min are also available if desired.
• Configure which percentile aggregation you want to send to Datadog with the histogram_percentiles parameter in your datadog.yaml configuration file. By default, only the 95percentile, 95th percentile, is sent out to Datadog.

A DISTRIBUTION metric generates by default five custom metrics for each unique combination of metric name and tag values to represent the global statistical distribution of values. These five custom metrics represent server-side aggregations of count, sum, min, max, and avg. Learn more about DISTRIBUTION metric type.

The number of unique tag value combinations submitted for a DISTRIBUTION metric with this tagging scheme is four.

• host:A, endpoint:X, status:200
• host:B, endpoint:X, status:200
• host:B, endpoint:X, status:400
• host:B, endpoint:Y, status:200

The number of custom metrics from a DISTRIBUTION metric is five times the unique combination of metric name and tag values. This results in request.Latency reporting a total of 5*4 = 20 custom metrics.

Adding percentile aggregations

You can include percentile aggregations (p50, p75, p90, p95, and p99) on your distribution metric. Including these additional percentile aggregations results in an additional volume of five times the unique combination of metric name and tag values (5*4 = 20 custom metrics). Therefore the total number of custom metrics emitted from this distribution metric with percentile aggregations is 2 * (5*4) = 40 custom metrics .

This table summarizes the effect of adding percentile aggregations to any distribution metric.

Configure tags with Metrics without Limits™

Custom metrics volumes can be impacted by configuring tags and aggregations using Metrics without Limits™. Metrics without Limits™ decouples ingestion costs from indexing costs – so you can continue sending Datadog all of your data (everything is ingested) and you can specify an allowlist of tags you’d want to remain queryable in the Datadog platform. Given the volume of data Datadog is ingesting for your configured metrics now differs from the smaller, remaining volume you’ve indexed, you’ll see two distinct volumes on your Usage page as well as the Metrics Summary page.

• Ingested Custom Metrics: The original volume of custom metrics based on the all ingested tags (sent via code)
• Indexed Custom Metrics: The volume of custom metrics that remains queryable in the Datadog platform (based on any Metrics without Limits™ configurations)

Note: Only configured metrics contribute to your Ingested custom metrics volume. If a metric is not configured with Metrics without Limits™, you’re only charged for its indexed custom metrics volume.

When are you charged for ingested vs indexed custom metrics?

For metrics not configured with Metrics without Limits™, you pay for for indexed custom metrics.

For metrics configured with Metrics without Limits™ (tags/aggregations are configured), you pay for ingested custom metrics and indexed custom metrics.

Suppose you want to keep only the endpoint and status tags associated with the request.Latency metric. This results in the following three unique tag combinations:

• endpoint:X, status:200
• endpoint:X, status:400
• endpoint:Y, status:200

The number of custom metrics from a DISTRIBUTION metric is five times the unique combination of metric name and tag values. As a result of the tag customization, request.Latency reporting a total of 5*3 = 15 indexed custom metrics. Based on the original tags sent on this metric, the original ingested custom metrics volume of request.Latency is 20 ingested custom metrics.

Learn more about Metrics without Limits™.