Metrics Cost Comparison Tool

A Next.js application that helps you compare the costs of different observability platforms based on metric volume and tag cardinality.

Features

• Interactive Metric Volume Slider: Adjust base metrics per second
• Tag Management: Add tags to see how cardinality explosion affects metric volume
• Cost Comparison: Compare monthly and annual costs across multiple platforms:
  • Cloud/SaaS Platforms:
    • Elastic Serverless
    • Datadog
    • New Relic
    • Splunk Observability
    • Dynatrace
    • Grafana Cloud
    • Chronosphere
  • Self-Hosted Solutions:
    • Elastic (Self-hosted)
    • Prometheus (Self-hosted)
    • Thanos (Self-hosted)
    • VictoriaMetrics (Self-hosted)
    • Cortex (Self-hosted)
• Real-time Calculations: See cost impacts instantly as you adjust parameters

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• npm or yarn

Installation

npm install

Environment Variables

Required for OpenTelemetry:

Create a .env.local file in the root directory with the following variables:

# OpenTelemetry Configuration (REQUIRED)
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://your-deployment-id.ingest.region.aws.elastic.cloud:443
OTEL_API_KEY=your-elastic-api-key-here

# Optional OpenTelemetry Configuration
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=metrics-compare
OTEL_SERVICE_VERSION=0.1.0
OTEL_DEPLOYMENT_ENVIRONMENT=production

Note: OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT and OTEL_API_KEY are required. OpenTelemetry will not initialize without them. Get these values from your Elastic Cloud dashboard.

Development

npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

Build

npm run build
npm start

Deployment to Vercel

1. Push your code to a Git repository
2. Import the project in Vercel
3. Vercel will automatically detect Next.js and configure the build settings
4. Set environment variables in Vercel Dashboard:
   • Go to your project settings → Environment Variables
   • See VERCEL_ENV_SETUP.md for detailed instructions
   • Required: OTEL_API_KEY (mark as sensitive)
   • Optional: OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT, OTEL_SERVICE_NAME, OTEL_SERVICE_VERSION, OTEL_DEPLOYMENT_ENVIRONMENT
   • The app will automatically use VERCEL_ENV if OTEL_DEPLOYMENT_ENVIRONMENT is not set

Or use the Vercel CLI:

npm i -g vercel
vercel

How It Works

The tool calculates metric volume by:

1. Starting with a base volume (metrics per second)
2. Multiplying by the number of unique tag values for each tag added
3. Converting to monthly volume
4. Calculating costs based on each platform's pricing model

This demonstrates how adding tags with high cardinality can dramatically increase metric volume and costs.

OpenTelemetry Integration

The app includes OpenTelemetry instrumentation that automatically sends traces and metrics to Elastic Observability. The instrumentation:

• Automatically instruments Node.js and Next.js operations
• Sends traces and metrics to the configured Elastic endpoint
• Includes service metadata (name, version, environment)
• Works in both development and production environments

To configure OpenTelemetry, set the environment variables in .env.local or in your Vercel project settings.

License

MIT