The Best Log Management Tools for Node.js Under $100/Month

Every Node.js developer knows the feeling: your app is humming along, and then the logs start piling up. Before you know it, you're staring at a Datadog bill that's jumped from a reasonable $50 to an eye-watering $500 in a single month. That's the Datadog tax — and it's why we went looking for log management tools that actually respect a sub-$100 budget.

We tested the contenders against the things actually worth buying: tools that integrate cleanly with Express and Fastify, speak Winston and Pino natively, support OpenTelemetry, and — most importantly — won't surprise you with a bill at the end of the month. Here are the three that made the cut.

SigNoz: Best All-in-One Log Management

If you want Datadog-level observability without the Datadog-sized price tag, SigNoz is the answer. It's an open-source, OpenTelemetry-native platform that handles logs, metrics, and traces in a single interface.1 That alone is a huge win — most tools in this price range force you to cobble together separate solutions for each signal.

SigNoz uses a refreshingly simple pricing model: you pay only for the data you send.1 For a small Node.js application processing a few gigabytes of logs per month, you'll comfortably stay under $100. The OpenTelemetry-native architecture means you instrument your Express or Fastify app once with the OpenTelemetry SDK, and SigNoz ingests everything — logs, distributed traces, and metrics — without needing proprietary agents.

The self-hosted option is even more aggressive on price: deploy it on your own infrastructure and the only cost is your server time. For teams that want full control and zero per-event fees, that's hard to beat.

Who it's for: Teams migrating off Datadog or New Relic who want a unified observability platform without the enterprise pricing.

ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana): Best for Control

The ELK Stack is the industry standard for log management, and for good reason. Elasticsearch's search speed, Logstash's pipeline flexibility, and Kibana's visualization layer form a combination that's been battle-tested at every scale.2

The beauty of ELK for budget-conscious Node.js teams is the self-hosted option: it's completely free. You run Elasticsearch and Kibana on your own servers, pipe your Winston or Pino logs through Logstash or a lightweight Beat like Filebeat, and you've got enterprise-grade log management for the cost of your infrastructure. For a small Node.js app, a single $20–$40 VPS can handle the whole stack comfortably.

If self-hosting isn't your thing, Elastic Cloud offers managed tiers starting around $95/mo for smaller deployments. That's tight on a $100 budget, but it works — and you get Elastic's managed uptime and scaling without the operational overhead.

The trade-off is complexity. ELK requires more hands-on configuration than SigNoz or Bugsnag. You'll need to define your Logstash pipelines, set up index management, and tune Elasticsearch mappings. For teams that already have DevOps muscle, it's a dream. For solo developers who just want logs to work, it might be overkill.

Who it's for: Teams that want maximum control, have some DevOps bandwidth, and prefer self-hosting to SaaS pricing.

Bugsnag: Best for Error Tracking

Sometimes you don't need a full log management platform — you need to know what's breaking, how often, and which bugs to fix first. That's Bugsnag's sweet spot.3

Bugsnag is an error monitoring platform that focuses on stability scores and impact-based prioritization. Instead of drowning you in raw log volume, it surfaces the errors that affect the most users and tells you exactly which release introduced them. For Node.js applications, the integration is straightforward: install the @bugsnag/js and @bugsnag/plugin-express packages, add a few lines of middleware, and you're capturing unhandled rejections, promise errors, and HTTP exceptions automatically.

The Small Team plan runs up to $99/mo, which fits neatly under our $100 ceiling.3 That plan includes error grouping, release tracking, and team collaboration features. It's not a full log management solution — you won't get the raw log search and dashboarding that SigNoz or ELK provide — but for error-focused teams, that's exactly the point. Bugsnag filters out the noise and shows you what matters.

Who it's for: Teams that prioritize error tracking over full-text log search, and want a set-it-and-forget-it monitoring layer on top of their existing logging.

How They Compare

The Bottom Line

If you're building a Node.js application and want to avoid the Datadog tax, you have real options. SigNoz is our top pick because it delivers unified logs, metrics, and traces through OpenTelemetry at a price that scales with you — not against you. ELK Stack remains the gold standard for teams that want total control and are willing to invest in setup. And Bugsnag is the focused choice for teams whose primary concern is catching and prioritizing errors.

All three stay under $100/mo for small to medium Node.js applications. All three integrate with the tools you're already using. And all three prove that great log management doesn't have to cost a fortune.

Recomate earns affiliate commissions from some of the products featured in this article. Our picks are based on independent testing and research — we only recommend the things actually worth buying.

Want a follow-up the article didn't answer? Ask the engine — it carries the article's context.