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Observe by Snowflake
Your logs, traces and metrics sit in three tools on three bills. Finding a cause shouldn’t mean three consoles — Observe by Snowflake keeps logs, metrics and traces in one telemetry lakehouse, priced per GiB with compute and users included, and adds an AI SRE you can ask from chat or your coding agent.
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Same software. Better outcome — at a lower cost.
How it’s rated
Full scoreboard ↓Quick answer
The Snowflake platform family
This page covers Observe by Snowflake — the standalone observability product. The rest of the Snowflake line:
Quick facts
30-second orientation- Product
- Log management, APM, infrastructure monitoring and an AI SRE on one telemetry lakehouse
- Maker
- Snowflake Inc. (NYSE: SNOW), CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy; Observe, Inc. joined on 2 February 2026
- Deal
- About $596M preliminary consideration, per Snowflake’s 10-Q; not the $1B the press reported
- Price
- Logs from $0.49/GiB, traces from $0.59/GiB, metrics from $0.008 per data point per minute
- Model
- Subscription on a committed volume of uncompressed ingest; Snowflake promises no overage bills
- Included
- Compute, unlimited users, alerts, dashboards and data sources; 30 days of log and trace history
- Account
- Standalone: Snowflake says you need not be an existing Snowflake customer to use Observe
- Collection
- OpenTelemetry ingested natively, plus 400+ pre-built integrations; data kept in Apache Iceberg
- India
- No Indian hosting region documented for Observe; ask where your telemetry will be stored
- In India via
- TechBag — ingest sizing, commitment modelling, quote in INR with GST, trial support
Understand observability pricing before you buy
Most product pages skip this. We start here — so you buy a capability, not a buzzword.
What is a telemetry lakehouse?
Logs, metrics and traces kept in one store, with storage split from compute, so history is cheap to keep.
A per-host tool per signal vs one telemetry lakehouse — the honest table
What consolidation actually replaces, dimension by dimension.
| Dimension | A per-host tool for each signal | Observe by Snowflake |
|---|---|---|
| How the bill grows | Per host, plus a fee for each new module | Per GiB or data point ingested, users free |
| Going over the plan | An overage line on next month’s invoice | A talk about right-sizing the commitment |
| Keeping old logs | Drop them after two weeks to save money | Extend history at $0.01 per GiB a month |
| Finding the cause | Three consoles and a spreadsheet of timestamps | An AI SRE reading one context graph |
| Data format | A proprietary index only one tool reads | Apache Iceberg tables in a lakehouse |
| What it is NOT | — | RUM, session replay, or an Indian-hosted service |
The cheapest test is the free trial: no card needed, two or three services, and one past outage to see whether the AI SRE finds its cause.
The five pieces of the platform
Vendors love diagrams; buyers need to know what they’re actually operating. Here’s the whole platform, demystified.
Ingest
Existing OpenTelemetry instrumentation is ingested as it is, and pre-built integrations cover cloud services, Kubernetes, containers and serverless functions.
Lakehouse
Logs, metrics and traces land in one store built on Snowflake, with compute separate from cheap object storage and columnar analytics over it, in Iceberg tables.
Graph
The graph maps how services, infrastructure, logs, metrics and traces relate, so an alert on one service can be followed to the dependency that actually broke.
AI SRE
An assistant correlates telemetry and proposes a root cause in Observe’s chat, or answers from a coding agent such as Claude or Cursor through the MCP server.
OpenTelemetry in, one Iceberg-backed lakehouse underneath — an AI SRE on a context graph answers in chat or MCP.
Nine capabilities. Collect, store, resolve.
Observe by Snowflake keeps every signal in one lakehouse and lets an AI SRE reason across it.
Keep the instrumentation you have
OTel data is ingested natively, giving automatic instrumentation and service discovery without swapping in a proprietary agent first.
400+ ready-made sources
Pre-built integrations pull metrics from cloud accounts, Kubernetes, containers and serverless, so most sources need no custom collector.
Logs, metrics, traces together
Log Management, APM and Infrastructure Monitoring sit in one product, so a slow trace and its error logs are read in a single place.
Storage priced like storage
Compute is split from object storage, so keeping a year of telemetry does not mean paying for a year of always-on search clusters.
Open table format underneath
Telemetry can be held in Apache Iceberg tables, an open format other query engines read, rather than a store only one vendor can open.
Months of history for a cent
Logs and traces keep 30 days in the base rate and metrics 13 months; longer history costs $0.01 per GiB a month, Snowflake’s list says.
A suggested cause, not a list
The AI SRE correlates the signals around an incident and surfaces a likely root cause, leaving the engineer to confirm and fix it.
Services mapped to signals
One graph links each service to its hosts, logs, metrics and traces, which is what lets the assistant reason across them in one pass.
Ask from your coding agent
Through the MCP server, a developer in Claude or Cursor can query production telemetry without opening a separate console or tab.
Watch the background to Observe
Observe’s Series C conversation from July 2025, recorded before Snowflake bought the company — background, not a product demo.
Inside Observe's Series C $156M Funding Round And The Future of Observability
Recorded before Snowflake bought Observe: background on the company’s funding and its view of observability, not a product demo.
Want a live, India-context walkthrough for your environment?
Book a guided demo →Telemetry bills grow faster than traffic. Observe prices every signal by volume in one lakehouse.
Here’s what genuinely sets it apart — and exactly where it stops.
A bill that follows volume, with no overage shock
Each signal has a public rate — $0.49 per GiB of logs, $0.59 per GiB of traces, $0.008 per metric DPM — with compute, users, alerts and dashboards folded in. You commit to an ingest volume; exceed it and Snowflake says it right-sizes the deal rather than invoicing the excess.
Telemetry kept in an open lakehouse
Signals land in a lakehouse built on Snowflake, storage split from compute, in Apache Iceberg tables. More history costs only storage, $0.01 per GiB a month past the included 30 days, and the tables stay in a format other engines can read if you later move on.
An AI SRE where engineers already work
The AI SRE walks a context graph of services, infrastructure and signals to propose a likely cause. It answers in Observe’s chat or, through an MCP server, inside coding agents such as Claude or Cursor, so whoever is fixing the bug can question production without switching tools.
Where it stops
No Indian hosting region is documented, so telemetry may be stored abroad. Real-user monitoring and session replay are not listed. You size an annual commitment up front, packaging is still settling after the February 2026 acquisition, and support tiers are unpublished.
The numbers behind the platform
What your Observe by Snowflake rollout looks like
Measure your real ingest
Total a month of uncompressed log, trace and metric volume by source, since that number sets the annual commitment.
Start the free trial
Open a trial without a card and send OpenTelemetry data from two or three services that have caused recent incidents.
Test the AI SRE on old incidents
Replay a known outage’s window and see whether the AI SRE names the cause your post-mortem found, from chat and MCP.
Settle residency and terms
Get the storage region, SSO, support tier and right-sizing terms written into the order before committing a volume.
Move sources and set retention
Shift the remaining sources over, set which logs need history past 30 days, and retire the old tool’s indexes.
The review scoreboard
Modelled on Gartner Peer Insights structure. *Counts and breakdowns are illustrative pending verified review collection.
Quick poll — what’s driving your evaluation?
Talk to an advisor“Our log volume doubled during a sale and no surprise invoice came. Snowflake simply reopened the commitment with us.”
“We kept our OpenTelemetry collectors untouched and pointed them at Observe; the first services showed up the same day.”
“Asking the AI SRE from Cursor while fixing the bug saved a lot of tab-hopping. Its first guess was right about half the time.”
“A cent per GiB a month made it easy to keep a quarter of logs for audits instead of throwing them away after two weeks.”
“Sizing the annual ingest commitment was guesswork. Measure a month of uncompressed volume before you sign anything.”
“Compliance asked where the logs sit and we had no Indian region to point to. That delayed approval by several weeks.”
Where everyone sits — the grids
Analyst firms bury this view behind paywalls, and G2 retired its Grid. So here’s TechBag’s synthesis of the observability market — tap any vendor to see why it sits where it does.
TechBag Observability Grid
Execution strength vs product vision — the classic market map, minus the paywall.
Logs from $0.49 per GiB; bought by Snowflake in 2026.
Volume Pricing × Signal Breadth
The grid nobody publishes — how closely the published price follows data volume rather than hosts vs how many signals one product covers.
Every signal priced per GiB or DPM; no RUM listed.
Positions are TechBag’s illustrative synthesis of public review-platform data and vendor documentation — not a reproduction of any analyst graphic. Verify before relying on it.
Observe by Snowflake vs the observability field
Against Datadog Log Management, Splunk Observability Cloud, Elastic Observability and two more host-priced platforms — on signals, price, retention, AI, OpenTelemetry and India.
| Dimension | Observe by Snowflake | Datadog Log Management | Splunk Observability Cloud | Elastic Observability | Dynatrace Observability | IBM Instana Observability |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Telemetry lakehouse | Logs on a wider SaaS | Full-stack, Cisco-owned | Observability on search | Agent plus causal AI | Auto-discovered stack |
| Deployment | SaaS only | Hosted sites only | Splunk-run service | Hosted, serverless, own | SaaS or managed | SaaS or self-hosted |
| Signals covered | Logs, metrics, traces | Logs in this product | All four, top edition | Every signal, logs first | Code to user session | Traces, maps, AI agents |
| Pricing model | Committed GiB ingest | Per GB + per event | Per host, annual | Resources or per GB | Annual drawdown | Per MVS, flexible terms |
| Published entry price | $0.49/GiB logs | $0.10/GB + indexing | From $15 per host | $0.07/GB serverless | $0.20/GiB log ingest | $21.20 per MVS-month |
| Included vs add-on | Compute and users in | Indexing billed apart | RUM needs top edition | Tiers gate features | Queries cost extra | Unlimited users |
| Retention and scale | 30 days, then $0.01 | Retention sets price | No-sample tracing | Hot down to frozen | Paid per GiB-day | Not published |
| AI and root cause | AI SRE on a graph | Watchdog anomalies | Correlation-led | ML jobs, assistant | Causal, map-based | Agentic AI, per IBM |
| OpenTelemetry and integrations | Native OTel, 400+ | 1,000+ integrations | Built on OTel | EDOT is GA | OTel stored natively | Extends the Collector |
| Governance and SSO | SSO not on the list | SAML, Audit Trail paid | Ask for SSO terms | SSO on Enterprise | SAML 2.0 federation | Roles not detailed |
| India storage region | Not documented | No Indian site | No Indian realm | Mumbai and Pune | AWS Mumbai | Mumbai since 2024 |
| Support and trial | Trial, no card | 2-hour critical | Cisco-era terms | 30 minutes, Enterprise | Not on the rate card | 14-day free trial |
| Lock-in and exit | Iceberg and OTel | History stays hosted | Annual, portable OTel | Run the engine yourself | Yearly subscription | Hourly, no lock |
| Best fit | Log-heavy, cost-driven | Datadog-centred teams | Splunk and Cisco estates | Search-skilled, in India | Big hybrid enterprises | Fast-changing services |
Which approach fits you?
Honest fit signals — because the fastest way to lose your trust is to pretend one product wins every scenario.
Choose Observe by Snowflake if…
- ✓Your log and trace volumes are large and you want a per-GiB price with compute, users and dashboards included
- ✓You already instrument with OpenTelemetry and want telemetry kept in open Iceberg tables rather than a closed index
- ✓Engineers would rather ask production questions from Claude or Cursor than learn another monitoring console
Compare alternatives if…
- ✓Telemetry must be stored in India — Elastic, Dynatrace and IBM Instana all document Indian regions
- ✓You need real-user monitoring or session replay in the same product — Splunk End-to-End and Elastic carry it
- ✓You want to run the platform yourself — Elastic and Instana offer self-managed editions
Do not expect…
- ✓A documented Indian hosting region for your logs, traces or metrics
- ✓A Gartner Magic Quadrant placement for Observe; none is verified
- ✓Published support tiers, or packaging that has settled since the 2026 acquisition
Observe by Snowflake is one of 23 observability & apm products TechBag carries. The Observability & APM guide narrows them to a shortlist and shows the reasoning. →
What does tool-hopping during incidents cost you?
Drag the sliders (services in production; engineer-hour cost). Estimates model engineering time lost switching between consoles and correlating logs, metrics and traces by hand at an assumed 1.5 hours per service a year, with 70% of it removed by one store and an AI SRE. Both figures are assumptions. Illustrative.
Loaded cost = salary + overheads per productive hour. Illustrative only — your TechBag quote models your actual environment and modules.
Three ways to consume it
Published: Observe lists starting rates of $0.49 per GiB for logs, $0.59 per GiB for traces and $0.008 per DPM for metrics, with compute, unlimited users, alerts and dashboards included and 30 days of log and trace history; longer retention is $0.01 per GiB a month. It is an annual subscription on committed uncompressed ingest, with no overage bills and volume or multi-year discounts on quote. TechBag measures your ingest first, then quotes in INR with GST.
Observe trial
Best for proving it on your own data
- Free trial, no credit card
- Send OpenTelemetry from a few services
- Test the AI SRE on a past incident
+ Platform add-ons
Best for a broader rollout
- Scoped to your estate
- Add-on modules as needed
- Phased, right-sized deployment
Observe subscription
Best for log- and trace-heavy estates
- Logs from $0.49/GiB, traces from $0.59/GiB
- Compute and unlimited users included
- Committed ingest; no overage bills
Buy it for less — TechBag pricing beats list
Whatever the list prices above, TechBag negotiates a significantly better deal — with GST-compliant INR invoicing and local support. Ask us for your discounted quote.
Get an India-ready quote
Tell us your requirements and current tools — we’ll model it against what you spend today.
The 8 questions to ask every vendor
Take this into your next vendor call — including ours.
What is your monthly uncompressed ingest per signal? The commitment is sized on it, not on hosts or users.
Does any regulator or customer need logs stored in India? Observe documents no Indian region today.
Do you need real-user monitoring or session replay? Observe lists logs, metrics, traces and infrastructure only.
Is your estate on OpenTelemetry already, or tied to a vendor agent you would have to replace first?
Which sources need history past 30 days, and how many GiB would that add at $0.01 per GiB a month?
Is SAML sign-in with role-based access confirmed in writing? The price page does not mention SSO.
What response time does your support tier promise? Snowflake publishes no support levels for Observe.
Is the no-overage right-sizing written into the order? Ask for INR with GST and the multi-year discount.
Questions buyers ask
Ready to evaluate Observe by Snowflake?
Model your monthly ingest per signal first, or let a TechBag advisor scope a trial that sends a few services' OpenTelemetry data and replays a recent incident.
Stats, ratings, review counts and pricing are illustrative and sourced from public materials; verify before purchase.