I have trouble understanding the pricing for synthetic monitoring, it is very hard to stay under 1 DPM. And the billing calculator does not explain what will happen if I exceed 1 DPM.
For example if I wan’t to monitor domain.com every 60 seconds from three locations (which is a quite common setup), this will generate:
102 active series
102 data points per minute which equals to 1,7 DPM (102/60)
How will I be billed for this over usage?
Hi @robinjohansson !
Each check for Synthetic Monitoring will generate active series with unique metric names + label value pairs. The frequency the check is performed determines how many data points per minute are generated for these active series. Metrics usage is billed based on the number of active series multiplied by the number of data points per minute. This is why we recommend sending at 1 data point per minute for data that does not change drastically during that interval of time. See Optimize your scrape interval to improve data points per minute (DPM)
As you configure a check, there should be an estimate that shows how many active series and how many data points per minute (DPM) will be generated. For example, creating an HTTP check for domain.com using three probe locations as you mentioned and using a 60 second frequency:
In the example shown above, there are 102 active series. When sending at 1 DPM, usage would be 102 billable metric series. In the example shown below, when sending at 2 DPM (every 30 seconds), the billable usage would be 204 billable metric series (102 active series * 2 DPM):
There are some additional billing examples shown here:
20,000 metric series are included in the Pro and Advanced plans. If greater than 20,000 billable metric series are utilized per calendar month, the additional usage is billed at $8 per 1,000 series of usage above 20,000. We have a pricing calculator here for some quick estimates.
In your hosted Grafana instance in the folder named GrafanaCloud, there will be a Billing & Usage dashboard to display usage activity and projected costs for the month so far. Note that final billing calculations are based on the 95th percentile of maximum usage for the calendar month so the projected cost can change throughout the month based on usage patterns.
If you ever have any concerns about projected usage, please open a support ticket from your account portal so we can help.
Note that the Grafana Cloud Free plan is never billed for any usage. If data ingestion exceeds the included amount, the excess data will be discarded and never billed. Grafana Cloud trial accounts are also never billed for any usage.
