Sazabi vs Chronosphere: Cost Control and Issue Detection for Log-Centered Teams
Prices and facts checked on vendor pages on Nov 8, 2026.
Chronosphere sells cost-controlled observability to large cloud-native companies. Its own website now says "Chronosphere is now Cortex XCOR by Palo Alto Networks," so you will see both names in what follows. Sazabi is AI-native observability and security for engineering teams that want to find production issues from logs without building monitors. Sazabi wrote this page. Chronosphere facts come only from its own site, checked November 8, 2026.
At a Glance
How Chronosphere Works and Charges
Chronosphere's FAQ describes a platform that ingests metrics, events, logs and traces in open formats such as Prometheus and OpenTelemetry. A second product, Telemetry Pipeline, comes from the makers of Fluent Bit and collects, transforms and routes data from any source to any destination.
The pricing story is the center of its pitch. The FAQ says it does not price by host or VM. It charges for the useful data you choose to keep, after you reshape the rest with its control layer. There is no public price list. Customers start with a pilot, which the FAQ says is typically free and averages two to three weeks, unless it is large or long. Telemetry Pipeline is priced on throughput.
The docs describe two contract models. In consumption, you buy a pool of credits and spend them across metrics, logs and traces, with budgets that can alert or drop data before the pool runs out. In capacity, you contract fixed rate limits for metrics, and going over them can drop data. For logs, the consumption units are persisted bytes (stored) and processed bytes (matched for transformation).
For logs, you can send data over an HTTP endpoint that accepts JSON or plain text and rejects compressed requests over 50 MB. The FAQ also lists OpenTelemetry Collector ingest for metrics, logs and traces. A Logs Usage page shows how much volume each kind of log consumes and where it is queried, and you can create optimization rules from it to reshape data before it is stored.
On AI, the AI-Powered Guided Troubleshooting page is marked "Now in limited availability." It describes ranked probable causes shown with the evidence behind each, plus notebooks that record an investigation as you go. Its security page says Chronosphere is SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 audited, with the report available through your account manager.
How Sazabi Works and Charges
Sazabi treats the log stream as the source of truth. You send logs, metrics and traces to one intake and connect GitHub and Slack. Sazabi detects issues from the logs, groups repeats of the same problem into one issue, investigates root cause, and alerts your channel. You can ask follow-up questions in plain language, and your coding agent can pull the same context through MCP, CLI or API.
The plans are Hobby $50, Startup $200 and Growth $1,000 per 30-day cycle. Each includes 200 GB ingested, 50 GB scanned, 20 issues and 500 AI credits, then $0.10 per GB ingested, $0.10 per GB scanned and $4 per issue. See Sazabi pricing. You can read the price without a sales call or pilot.
Key Differences for a Log-Centered Team
Who tunes the data. Chronosphere's control plane depends on policies your team tunes to decide what to keep. Sazabi's plans keep everything you send inside the retention window, and you pay by volume and issues instead.
Metrics. Chronosphere is built around metrics at scale, including capacity limits on cardinality. Sazabi stores Prometheus and OpenTelemetry metrics as log records. That works for dashboards and questions, but it is not a metrics engine.
How you start. Chronosphere starts with a pilot and a negotiated contract. Sazabi starts with a sign-up and a plan.
Naming. Search results, docs and sales material may say Chronosphere, Cortex XCOR or both. Confirm which product and contract terms you are being quoted before you compare.
When to Pick Chronosphere
- You run large Kubernetes estates and need to control metrics cardinality and spend.
- Your platform team wants budgets and quotas that drop data automatically.
- You want a pipeline, a platform and enterprise support from one vendor.
- You already buy from Palo Alto Networks and want to consolidate.
When to Pick Sazabi
- Your problem is finding and explaining production issues in logs, not shaping metrics.
- You want a price you can read before you talk to anyone.
- You want root cause handed to a coding agent in your editor.
- Your team is too small to run a data-shaping practice.
Trying Sazabi Alongside Chronosphere
Chronosphere's FAQ lists OpenTelemetry Collector ingest, and Sazabi accepts OTLP/HTTP, so the Collector is the cleanest path: add an otlphttp/sazabi exporter next to the Chronosphere one, as in Sazabi's OpenTelemetry Collector guide and the OpenTelemetry integration. If you also run Fluent Bit agents, Sazabi's Fluent Bit guide adds one more output section, and the Fluent Bit integration page lists the capabilities.
Pick one service and send its logs to both for two weeks. Compare which tool surfaced a real incident first without a prewritten rule, and what each one would cost at your volume. For another view of a metrics-heavy stack, see Sazabi vs Grafana.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Chronosphere now Cortex XCOR?
Yes. Chronosphere.io states that Chronosphere is now Cortex XCOR by Palo Alto Networks, and its documentation uses the Cortex XCOR name. The chronosphere.io domain and product names such as Telemetry Pipeline are still in use.
Does Chronosphere publish its prices?
Not on the pages we checked. Its FAQ says it works with each customer on a pilot and a price, and its docs describe consumption and capacity models that your contract selects.
Can I send logs to Chronosphere and Sazabi at once?
Yes, if your logs pass through an OpenTelemetry Collector. Chronosphere lists Collector ingest, and Sazabi accepts OTLP/HTTP, so add an otlphttp exporter pointed at your Sazabi intake URL next to the existing one.
Does Sazabi replace Chronosphere for metrics?
Not if you depend on metrics cardinality control. Sazabi stores metrics as searchable records alongside logs, but Chronosphere is built around shaping metrics at scale.
Sources
- Chronosphere is now Cortex XCOR by Palo Alto Networks; platform and Telemetry Pipeline product split (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Pricing approach, pilot process, SaaS delivery, retention by customer, OpenTelemetry Collector ingest (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Consumption and capacity pricing models, budgets and quotas (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Log billing units: persisted bytes and processed bytes (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Log HTTP endpoint, accepted formats, compression and request limits (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Logs Usage page and optimization rules for log data (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Guided troubleshooting, ranked causes with evidence, investigation notebooks (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Telemetry Pipeline collection, processing and routing scope (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 audit statement (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi plan prices, included usage, overage rates and retention (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- BYOC availability on AWS under an enterprise agreement (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Metrics and traces stored as searchable log records (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Adding Sazabi as an extra OTLP/HTTP exporter in an OpenTelemetry Collector (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sending Fluent Bit logs to Sazabi over OTLP (accessed Nov 8, 2026)