Cost No extra fee for public internet traffic, even at log volume.
A Kafka buffer that doesn't scale your bandwidth bill
Observability data is high-volume and highly compressible. ntail meters data in and out on the compressed bytes and never charges extra for public internet traffic, so a buffer that grows doesn't quietly become the biggest line on your invoice.
- Metered compressed
- No fee per destination
- No public internet fee
- Free migration
Example monthly invoice
10 MiB/s in · 20 MiB/s out · 7-day retention- Data in10 MiB/s × $25
- $250
- Data out20 MiB/s × $25
- $500
- Storage7 days of writes ≈ 6.3 TB × $20
- $126
- Public internet trafficData sent and read, any volume
- $0
Illustrative example at list price — a log/trace stream fanned out to two destinations. Data in and out are measured compressed. Model your own workload.
- $0Extra fees for public internet traffic
- GB/sSustained throughput per cluster
- 99.99%Contractual uptime SLA
- $50/moPer-cluster minimum, about 7¢/hour
Cost
The bandwidth fee is often the surprise
Logs and traces are exactly the high-in, high-out pattern that makes a per-GB bandwidth fee hurt the most.
Same workload, three providers
10 MiB/s in, 20 MiB/s out (compressed), 7-day retention — monthly, at list price.
Illustrative comparison based on published list prices for an equivalent workload, including the data-transfer charges that competing services meter separately. Your numbers will differ — try the calculator or ask us for a modelled quote against your actual bill.
-
Metered on compressed bytes
Logs and traces are usually verbose text or JSON that compresses 3–5×, and you're billed on the compressed size for both data in and data out.
-
Fan out without a per-destination fee
A SIEM, cold storage and a dashboard can all read the same stream, and each additional consumer never adds a public internet fee.
-
Retention sized to the buffer window
Size storage to how long you need replay ability, not to your long-term log retention policy — storage bills per TB actually retained.
Built for telemetry
Built for verbose, high-volume telemetry
A transport layer in front of your existing observability stack — not a replacement for it.
-
Sustained high-volume throughput
Sustained gigabytes per second per cluster, with capacity that follows a log spike automatically — no ceiling to raise before an incident generates a burst of traces.
Scales in seconds, not windows
-
No public internet fee
Ship data to destinations outside your network with no data-transfer charge, at any volume — the fee that most inflates a log-pipeline bill.
Typically the biggest saving
-
Sits in front of your existing tools
ntail doesn't replace your logging, metrics or tracing backend — it's the durable buffer in front of it, so your existing tools stay exactly the same.
Works with the tools you already use
Reliability & performance
The numbers we sign up to
With service credits attached when we miss them.
- 99.99%Uptime SLAUnder 4.4 minutes a month, with service credits
- ZeroMaintenance windowsUpgrades and scaling with no downtime for you
- 11 9sData durabilityEvery write on durable, verified storage
- <60 sCapacity changesScale up for a peak, down the same evening
FAQ
Common questions about observability pipelines
Does compressed metering matter for logs specifically?
Yes. Logs and traces are usually verbose text or JSON that compresses 3–5×, and you're billed on the compressed size for both data in and data out — not the raw record size.
Can I fan out the same log stream to multiple destinations?
Yes. A SIEM, cold storage and a dashboard can all read the same stream as independent consumers, and each additional consumer never adds a public internet fee.
How do I size retention for a buffer use case?
Retention for a buffer is usually short — size it to how long you need replay ability, not to your long-term log retention policy. Storage bills per TB actually retained, so a smaller buffer window costs less.
Does this replace our logging or observability backend?
No — ntail is the durable transport layer in front of it. Your existing logging, metrics and tracing tools stay exactly the same; ntail just carries the data to them without adding a bandwidth fee.
Stop paying to move your own telemetry
Contact us for a quote in minutes, or send us last month's streaming invoice and we'll model the same workload on ntail — line by line, no obligation.