Service plans of STACKIT Observability
STACKIT Observability offers several service plans that differ in functionality, capacity and data retention.
Each plan defines how many metrics, logs and traces you can store and how many alerting rules, receivers and users are supported.
The smallest plan, Frontend Starter, provides access only to Grafana dashboards.
It allows you to connect existing data sources but does not include storage for metrics, logs or traces.
This plan is ideal if you want to explore Grafana dashboards or connect to external monitoring systems first.
All other plans include full observability features: storing telemetry data (metrics, logs, traces), creating dashboards and setting up alerts.
The following plan groups are currently available:
| Plan Group | Description |
|---|---|
| Frontend | Grafana-only access to connect existing data sources. No storage and no alerting. |
| Metrics Endpoint | Scrape metrics with very short retention for live views. No alerting, no users. |
| Monitoring | Metrics storage and alerting + Grafana. No logs or traces. |
| Observability | Full stack: metrics, logs, traces, alerting, and Grafana. |
All plans are fully managed by STACKIT and operated with high availability.
The number of metrics samples, alerting rules and data storage capacity increase with larger plan sizes.
To upgrade to a larger plan, please open a service request via the
STACKIT Help Center .
Retention and data formats
Section titled “Retention and data formats”STACKIT Observability uses open standards for telemetry collection.
All metrics, logs and traces must be transmitted in OpenTelemetry or OpenMetrics format.
Metrics
Section titled “Metrics”- Default retention: 90 days
- Configurable up to 780 days (26 months)
- Retention can be changed in the Observability Service Dashboard or via the Observability API
Logs and Traces
Section titled “Logs and Traces”- Default retention: 5 days
- Configurable up to 30 days
- Retention can be adjusted via the Observability API
Feature overview by plan type
Section titled “Feature overview by plan type”| Capability | Frontend Starter | Metrics Endpoint (100k) | Monitoring (Starter → XXL) | Observability (Starter → Large) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grafana dashboards (users) | ✓ (up to 5) | ✗ | ✓ (up to 200) | ✓ (up to 200) |
| Connect existing data sources | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Metrics samples / minute | 0 | 100,000 | up to 3,000,000 | up to 300,000 |
| Store metrics | ✗ | ✓ (1-minute retention) | ✓ (90 days default, up to 780 days) | ✓ (90 days default, up to 780 days) |
| Create alerts (metrics) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Store logs | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ (5 days default, up to 30 days) |
| Store traces | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ (5 days default, up to 30 days) |