Seq vs OpenObserve

Log tools are sold in very different ways, and these two show the extremes. Seq is a self-hosted server from Datalust in Brisbane, Australia, sold as flat annual licences with unlimited retention on every tier. OpenObserve Inc. in Menlo Park, California, ships an AGPL-3.0 core you can run yourself and also runs a cloud that bills per gigabyte ingested and per gigabyte queried. The real question is whether you want a fixed yearly figure and an install you operate, or a usage meter, a free open source edition and a vendor-run option.

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Both are reviewed in full in our log management software ranking: Seq and OpenObserve.

1. 01

   Thirty days of logs against retention without a clock

   OpenObserve Cloud keeps logs, traces and RUM data for 30 days by default and metrics for 15 months. Going longer on anything except metrics costs $0.02 per GB for each additional 30 days, and infinite retention is Enterprise only, through bring your own bucket. Seq states that every tier has unlimited retention time and sources, so its limits are users, storage and server installs instead. A team that must keep a year of logs will find the Seq arithmetic simpler to forecast.

   Edge: Seq

2. 02

   Flat yearly tiers or a per-gigabyte meter

   Seq publishes flat annual prices in USD, excluding tax: Team at $1,090 for up to 10 users and 100 GB, Standard at $2,990 with unlimited users and storage, Datacenter at $10,990. It is subscription only, with no perpetual licence. OpenObserve Cloud Professional charges $0.50 per GB ingested plus $0.01 per GB queried, does not bill users, and gives 30 percent off for an annual commitment. Seq is easier to budget, OpenObserve cheaper when volume is low.

   Depends on the buyer

3. 03

   The free route for one person against the free route for a company

   Seq's Individual licence costs $0 per year for one person, with 50 GB of storage, up to 100 million metric samples and community support. A 30-day trial and a 30-day refund are available on request. OpenObserve offers an Open Source edition it calls free forever, a 14-day cloud trial with no credit card, and a self-hosted Enterprise edition free up to 50 GB of ingestion per day. The OpenObserve free routes cover a whole team, the Seq one does not.

   Edge: OpenObserve

4. 04

   AGPL-3.0 core versus a vendor licence agreement

   The OpenObserve pricing FAQ says the open source core is licensed AGPL-3.0, so you can read, run and modify it, though the terms deserve a legal read before you embed it in a product. Seq links to a Seq End-User License Agreement, and no open source licence is stated for it on the pages we read. Seq also sells subscriptions only. If licence openness decides the shortlist, OpenObserve is the clearer answer on the evidence we saw.

   Edge: OpenObserve

5. 05

   Who runs the server and where the data sits

   Datalust says log and trace data stays on your own machine or cloud account and is never sent to Datalust, adding that it has no subprocessors. The pricing page lists no vendor-run version, so every Seq install is yours to patch and back up. OpenObserve offers both a cloud service on a your-org.openobserve.ai address and a self-hosted route with a Kubernetes install example. Strict data control favours Seq, while choice of operating model favours OpenObserve.

   Depends on the buyer

6. 06

   Querying, alerts and ways to feed data in

   Seq filters and pivots on structured events, adds traces for slow requests, slices metrics, and sends alerts to Slack, Teams and email, with a CLI and MCP for integration. OpenObserve searches logs with SQL, speaks Prometheus-compatible metrics, imports Grafana boards, and alerts to Slack, PagerDuty and email. It ingests through OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Fluent Bit, Vector and Kubernetes. Both cover the daily needs, and the OpenObserve ingest list is the longer one on the pages we read.

   Depends on the buyer

What happens to Seq at the 100 GB mark on the Team licence?

The Team licence at $1,090 per year caps storage at 100 GB and ten users, with one server install.

Standard at $2,990 per year removes the user and storage limits and allows up to three installs. So a growing group usually steps up to Standard rather than staying on Team.

Can OpenObserve be run for nothing indefinitely?

Yes on its own terms. The Open Source edition is described as free forever and self-hosted, and the self-hosted Enterprise edition is free up to 50 GB of ingestion per day. Above 50 GB per day the pricing page says to contact sales.

Which of the two is the European option?

Neither, on our data. Datalust is listed in Brisbane, Australia, and OpenObserve Inc. at an address in Menlo Park, California, United States. No parent company is named for either vendor.

• Datalust Seq pricing page: the four annual USD tiers with their user, storage and install limits, subscription-only sales and the 30-day trial and refund.
• Datalust Seq product page: Brisbane base since 2013, self-hosted deployment with no subprocessors, the EULA link and the named log, trace, metric and alert functions.
• OpenObserve pricing page: the $0.50 ingest and $0.01 query rates, 30 and 15-month retention, the $0.02 extension charge, free editions and AGPL-3.0 core.
• OpenObserve homepage: the Menlo Park company address and the SQL search, Grafana import, alerting and ingestion integrations.