Sazabi vs Elastic Observability: Serverless Log Pricing and AI Compared
Prices and facts checked on vendor pages on Nov 8, 2026.
Elastic Observability is built on Elasticsearch: you ingest data, shape it, and query it with the Elastic Stack's tools, and Elastic now adds agents on top. Sazabi is AI-native observability and security that starts from logs and opens issues for problems it detects, without a query language or index design on your side. Sazabi wrote this page, so verify each Elastic detail against the sources listed below.
At a Glance
How Elastic Charges
Elastic's Observability Serverless pricing page, checked November 8, 2026, has two tiers. Logs Essentials covers ad hoc log analysis, dashboards, integrations, and alerts. Complete adds curated analysis experiences, SLOs, AI-assisted pipelines and parsing, machine learning, and agentic AI with workflow automation.
Pricing is ingest plus retention. Logs Essentials lists ingest at as low as $0.07 per GB and retention at as low as $0.017 per GB per month. Complete lists as low as $0.09 and $0.019 for logs and traces, with separate metric rates of $0.023 per GB ingested and $0.005 per GB retained, effective July 1, 2026. Egress is 50 GB free per month, then $0.05 per GB. Elastic says retention is based on the total data stored in your project.
Several features are add-ons on Complete: an Elastic Managed LLM at $4.50 per million input tokens and $21 per million output tokens, Workflows at as low as $0.0108 per execution, and Agent Builder at as low as $0.025 per execution, each after 10,000 free executions. Support above the Standard subscription is priced as a percentage of consumption, from 5% to 15%.
Elastic documents a 99.95% monthly uptime SLA for Serverless. It also states that some cluster-level capabilities, such as custom plugins and user-initiated snapshots, are not available there.
How Sazabi Charges and Works
Sazabi's pricing page lists Hobby at $50, Startup at $200, and Growth at $1,000 per 30-day cycle, each with 200 GB ingested, 50 GB scanned, 20 issues, and 500 AI credits included. Beyond that it charges $0.10 per GB ingested, $0.10 per GB scanned, $4 per issue, and $0.01 per credit. Retention is 7, 30, or 90 days by plan. See Sazabi pricing for the limits.
In use, Sazabi reads logs as they arrive, opens an issue when it detects a problem, and attaches the evidence. Repeats of one problem are grouped into a single issue. You can ask questions in plain language and get alerts in Slack, Microsoft Teams, or email. It connects to your repositories, scans them for vulnerabilities, and ties failures to code. It does not write fixes. It hands root cause to your coding agent through MCP, CLI, or API.
Key Differences for a Log-Centered Team
What you still configure. Elastic's docs say Serverless removes cluster management, upgrades, and backups. Dashboards, alerts, and ingest pipelines remain things you set up, as the tier feature lists show. With Sazabi, the starting point is an issue that is already investigated.
What the unit measures. Elastic's ingest and retention meters are per GB of stored data. Sazabi adds a scan meter for query volume and an issue meter. Elastic's lowest listed per-GB rates are below Sazabi's overage rate, so for pure storage of large volumes the comparison turns on how much of the rest of the Sazabi bundle you use.
AI approach. Elastic's Agent Builder lets you define agents and tools over your own Elasticsearch data. Its docs say agents can also be exposed to Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other clients through an MCP server. Sazabi ships its agent and investigation flow as the product, with no agents or tools to define.
Breadth of platform. Elastic sells Observability alongside Search and Security, so teams already running Elastic for either can add observability data to the same platform.
Worked Example
Assumptions: 300 GB ingested and retained for one month, logs only, no egress charge. Elastic at the lowest listed rates, which are marked "as low as".
At these rates Elastic is lower for pure ingest and storage. Elastic measures stored data in its own project, so stored GB may differ from ingested GB, and the rates are floors rather than a quote. Sazabi's price includes issue detection, investigation, and AI credits, which on Elastic map to Complete tier features and add-ons. Run Elastic's estimator on your volumes before deciding.
When to Pick Elastic
Pick Elastic when you want a search platform you control, with Kibana, ES|QL, and Elasticsearch relevance across logs, security data, and application search. Pick it for the lowest listed per-GB storage prices, for self-managed deployment under SSPL, Elastic License 2.0, or AGPLv3, or if your security team already runs Elastic.
When to Pick Sazabi
Pick Sazabi when you do not want to design indices, parsing, and alert rules, and you want an agent that watches logs and delivers a finished investigation to your coding agent. It is also a good fit for small teams that want one price per 30-day cycle. See Elastic alternatives for a wider list.
Trying Sazabi Alongside Elastic
Sazabi's Elastic Cloud source has two paths. Elastic Agent 8.13 or later can run in OpenTelemetry Collector mode and forward logs. Alternatively, a self-managed Logstash pipeline polls Elasticsearch and forwards OTLP log records. See the Elastic Cloud integration page.
The Sazabi agent can also search Elasticsearch through the Elastic Cloud MCP connector. It needs Elastic Cloud 9.2 or later, or a Serverless project, with Agent Builder enabled. For OpenTelemetry-based pipelines, start from Sazabi and OpenTelemetry.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Elastic Observability Serverless charge for logs?
Elastic lists ingest per GB, retention per GB retained per month, and egress per GB transferred, with 50 GB of egress free. Logs Essentials shows as low as $0.07 per GB ingested and $0.017 per GB retained. Complete shows as low as $0.09 and $0.019 for logs and traces.
Can I forward logs from Elastic to Sazabi?
Yes. Sazabi documents two paths: Elastic Agent 8.13 or later in OpenTelemetry Collector mode, or a self-managed Logstash pipeline that polls Elasticsearch and forwards OTLP log records.
Does Elastic have an AI agent for observability?
Elastic documents Agent Builder, where you create agents with built-in and custom tools over your Elasticsearch data. Its docs also say the older AI Assistant is deprecated and the Elastic AI Agent is the default chat experience.
Can the Sazabi agent query Elasticsearch?
Yes. An Elastic Cloud MCP connector gives the Sazabi agent tools to search indices with Query DSL, read field mappings, fetch documents, and call Agent Builder tools. It needs Elastic Cloud 9.2 or later, or a Serverless project, with Agent Builder enabled.
Sources
- Logs Essentials and Complete tiers, ingest, retention and egress rates, add-on prices, support percentages, uptime SLA (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- What Elastic Cloud Serverless is, what Elastic manages, and the cluster capabilities not available in it (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- AI Assistant deprecation notice and Elastic AI Agent as the default chat experience (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Agent Builder, custom agents and tools, MCP server and external MCP tools (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Elasticsearch and Kibana source licenses: SSPL, Elastic License 2.0, and AGPLv3 option (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi plan prices, included usage, overage rates and retention per plan (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Forwarding logs from Elastic Cloud to Sazabi with Elastic Agent in OpenTelemetry Collector mode or Logstash (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Elastic Cloud MCP connector tools and prerequisites for the Sazabi agent (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi BYOC on AWS under an enterprise agreement (accessed Nov 8, 2026)