Self-Hosted Monitoring Cost Calculator

Estimate the total cost of ownership for a self-hosted monitoring platform using Prometheus, Grafana, and a Log Aggregation Stack on AWS, including platform engineering personnel costs.

Environment Size

Prometheus (Metrics)

For HA setup, minimum 2 recommended

gp3 SSD for TSDB storage

Local retention before archival

Grafana (Visualization)

Behind ALB for HA

For capacity planning reference

Recommended for production

Log Aggregation Stack

Minimum 3 for cluster

gp3 SSD for indices

Before compression

Networking & Infrastructure

For Grafana HA access

First 100GB/month free

For config and critical data backups

Platform Engineer (India)

Full-time platform engineer with 4-6 years experience to manage and maintain the monitoring infrastructure.

4-6 years DevOps/Platform experience

Benefits, equipment, training, etc.

% of time dedicated to this platform

Cost Breakdown

Prometheus
$0
EC2 + Storage
Grafana
$0
EC2 + RDS
Log Stack
$0
ELK/Loki
Infrastructure
$0
ALB + Transfer + S3
Total AWS Infrastructure
$0
$0/year
Platform Engineer Cost
$0
$0/year (₹0 LPA)
Total Monthly Cost (TCO)
$0
Annual TCO
$0
AWS %: 0%
Personnel %: 0%

Detailed Cost Breakdown

Component Details Qty Unit Cost Monthly

Pricing Notes & Assumptions

  • • AWS prices based on US East (N. Virginia) region, on-demand pricing
  • • Reserved instances (1-3 year) can reduce EC2/RDS costs by 30-60%
  • • Platform Engineer salary based on 2024-2025 India market rates for 4-6 YOE
  • • USD/INR exchange rate: ₹83 = $1 (approximate)
  • • Does not include: VPC costs, Route53, CloudWatch, WAF, or other ancillary services
  • • Actual costs may vary based on usage patterns, data growth, and regional pricing

Self-Hosted vs Managed Services

Compare this TCO with managed alternatives like Datadog, New Relic, or Grafana Cloud. Self-hosting provides more control and potentially lower costs at scale, but requires dedicated engineering resources for maintenance, upgrades, and on-call support.