If you’ve ever managed modern applications, you know the pain. Systems are made up of hundreds of services, APIs, and containers. When something breaks, the last thing you want is to jump between five different tools, digging through logs or dashboards. Observability tools exist to solve this problem, but most are either too expensive, too complicated, or too restrictive. That’s why engineers are turning to dash0 an observability platform that makes monitoring fast, simple, and open.
What is Dash0?
Dash0 is an OpenTelemetry-native observability platform that unifies metrics, traces, and logs into a single, intuitive experience. Unlike traditional tools, dash0 doesn’t force your data into proprietary formats. Instead, it preserves OpenTelemetry semantic conventions, keeping your telemetry portable, vendor-neutral, and packed with context from day one.
Why Dash0 Stands Out
OpenTelemetry-Native by Default
Most tools “support” OpenTelemetry but twist it to fit their own ecosystem. Dash0 is different — it embraces OTel fully, giving you flexibility and avoiding vendor lock-in.
Developer-Centric Design
Built with engineers in mind, dash0 focuses on usability. It’s not just another dashboard factory — it’s a problem-solving toolkit.
Transparent Costs
One of the biggest headaches in observability is unpredictable billing. With dash0, pricing is clear and based on telemetry volume, not arbitrary metrics like hosts or seats.
The Building Blocks of Dash0
Metrics
With dash0, metrics aren’t just numbers — they’re signals with history. Long retention helps track SLIs, performance regressions, and usage patterns.
Traces
Follow requests across services with distributed tracing. Dash0 makes it simple to find slow endpoints, bottlenecks, or failing dependencies.
Logs
Logs aren’t meant to live in isolation. In dash0, they tie directly to traces and metrics, so every spike or anomaly has context.
Dashboards & Service Maps
Out-of-the-box dashboards and interactive service maps let you see your system as it runs in production.
Alerting & Synthetic Monitoring
Stay ahead of outages by setting actionable alerts and running synthetic checks that mimic user behavior.
Dash0 for Developers, SREs, and Platform Engineers
For Developers
Debugging in production becomes faster with connected signals.
For SREs
Mean time to resolution (MTTR) drops when you can pivot between metrics, logs, and traces in seconds.
For Platform Engineers
Kubernetes-native observability makes cluster management effortless with dash0.
Dash0 Architecture: Built for Scale
Behind the scenes, dash0 uses ClickHouse, a columnar database that excels at handling massive telemetry volumes with speed and efficiency. The result? High-cardinality queries that run in seconds, not minutes.
How Dash0 Saves You Money
Consumption-Based Pricing
No more paying per seat or per host. With dash0, you’re billed for what you ingest — per million spans, logs, or metrics.
Cost Transparency
Dashboards show exactly where costs come from, broken down by service, namespace, or workload.
Telemetry Optimization
By highlighting noisy signals, dash0 helps you cut waste and keep costs under control.
Dash0 vs The Competition
Dash0 vs Datadog
Datadog is powerful but comes with sky-high bills. Dash0 is leaner, open, and cost-predictable.
Dash0 vs New Relic
New Relic requires proprietary data formats. Dash0 keeps everything OpenTelemetry-compliant.
Dash0 vs Grafana + Prometheus
Prometheus and Grafana are flexible but DIY-heavy. Dash0 delivers the same power with less operational overhead.
Real-World Use Cases for Dash0
Startups
Grow without worrying about observability costs spiraling out of control.
Enterprise Teams
Gain deep visibility across thousands of services without vendor lock-in.
Kubernetes Workloads
Monitor clusters, pods, and namespaces natively.
Incident Response
Resolve outages faster with correlated data streams.
Getting Started with Dash0
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Sign up for the free trial.
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Send telemetry through OpenTelemetry collectors.
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Explore pre-built dashboards and service maps.
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Set alerts for your most critical SLIs.
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Expand as your observability needs grow.
Best Practices When Using Dash0
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Define consistent naming for services and namespaces.
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Use sampling strategies to manage trace volume.
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Review cost dashboards regularly.
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Integrate synthetic monitoring for proactive alerts.
Future of Observability with Dash0
As the industry shifts toward open standards, dash0 is set to lead the way. By combining OpenTelemetry with cost-effective scalability, it positions itself as the go-to observability platform for modern engineering teams.
Conclusion
If you’ve been frustrated by expensive, bloated observability platforms, dash0 is the alternative you’ve been waiting for. Open, transparent, and developer-focused, it brings metrics, logs, and traces together into a unified experience. Whether you’re running a startup or managing enterprise-scale infrastructure, dash0 keeps observability simple, flexible, and affordable.
FAQs
Q1: What makes dash0 different from other observability platforms?
Dash0 is OpenTelemetry-native, vendor-neutral, and offers predictable pricing.
Q2: How does dash0 pricing work?
Pricing is based on telemetry volume, measured per million spans, metrics, or logs.
Q3: Can dash0 integrate with Kubernetes?
Yes, dash0 natively supports Kubernetes monitoring with namespace and workload-level insights.
Q4: Does dash0 support synthetic monitoring?
Absolutely. You can simulate user flows to detect issues before they impact real users.
Q5: Who should use dash0?
Developers, SREs, and platform engineers who want observability without complexity or vendor lock-in.
