Picture this: your application is running smoothly, customers are happy, and then suddenly latency spikes. Transactions fail. Your dashboard lights up red. The team scrambles, switching between logs, metrics dashboards, and tracing tools. Sound familiar?

That chaos is what dash0 was built to fix. Instead of juggling five tools, dash0 gives you a single observability platform where metrics, logs, and traces live together. It’s fast, transparent, and fully OpenTelemetry-native which means no lock-in and no black boxes.

What is Dash0?

At its core, dash0 is an observability platform built for modern engineering teams. It collects and connects telemetry data—metrics, traces, and logs—so you can see exactly what’s happening inside your system.

Unlike older tools that wrap your data in proprietary formats, dash0 keeps everything open with OpenTelemetry (OTel). That makes it flexible, future-proof, and easy to integrate with your existing setup.

Why Dash0 is Different

  • 100% OTel-native: Your data stays open, portable, and reusable.

  • Transparent pricing: No host-based or seat-based surprises—just clear volume-based pricing.

  • Performance at scale: Built on ClickHouse for lightning-fast queries.

  • Engineer-first design: Fewer gimmicks, more clarity.

Dash0’s Core Features

Metrics that Scale

Track system performance and service-level indicators with real-time speed.

Distributed Tracing

Follow every request across microservices to uncover bottlenecks.

Logs in Context

Stop digging—logs tie directly to traces and metrics.

Dashboards & Service Maps

See your system’s dependencies and health at a glance.

Smart Alerts

Get notified before issues spiral into outages.

Configuration-as-Code

Version-control dashboards and alerts for consistency.

How Dash0 Works Behind the Scenes

The secret sauce is ClickHouse, a high-performance database that powers dash0’s analytics. High-cardinality queries—like filtering by service, namespace, or error code—run smoothly even at scale.

Because it’s OTel-native, dash0 doesn’t manipulate or restrict your data. You’re always in control of how telemetry flows.

Who Benefits Most from Dash0?

  • Developers: Debug production issues faster.

  • SREs: Cut downtime and MTTR.

  • Platform Engineers: Manage Kubernetes workloads with ease.

  • Scaling Teams: Grow without unpredictable observability bills.

Pricing Made Simple

Legacy vendors love complicated pricing: per seat, per host, per query. That’s why budgets spiral out of control.

Dash0 takes a different approach: pay only for the telemetry you send. Plus, built-in usage dashboards let you track costs by team, namespace, or service.

Dash0 vs Other Platforms

Dash0 vs Datadog

Datadog is powerful but expensive. Dash0 is lean, cost-effective, and OTel-native.

Dash0 vs New Relic

New Relic reformats data into proprietary formats. Dash0 keeps it open.

Dash0 vs Prometheus + Grafana

Prometheus and Grafana are strong DIY tools, but they demand lots of setup. Dash0 just works.

Real-World Use Cases

  • Debugging a failing checkout service with traces tied directly to logs.

  • Monitoring Kubernetes clusters without complex add-ons.

  • Reducing costs by tracking telemetry usage across teams.

  • Faster response during outages with connected data.

Dash0 in Action: A Scenario

It’s 2 a.m. Your payments service starts throwing errors. Instead of flipping between dashboards, you open dash0. Error rates jump out in the metrics view. A trace shows the failing microservice. Logs tied to that trace reveal a misconfigured database connection. Problem found—problem fixed—in minutes.

Best Practices for Using Dash0

  • Use consistent labels in telemetry data.

  • Apply sampling for high-volume traces.

  • Check cost dashboards weekly.

  • Keep alerts and dashboards versioned in Git.

The Future of Observability with Dash0

Observability is moving toward open standards and away from lock-in. Dash0 is ahead of the curve, giving teams a platform that’s fast, flexible, and engineer-friendly. It’s observability reimagined for the cloud-native era.

Conclusion

With dash0, you get more than a tool—you get a philosophy: open, transparent, and simple. By unifying metrics, logs, and traces, it removes the noise and helps teams focus on solving problems. If you’re tired of bloated dashboards, unpredictable costs, and vendor lock-in, it’s time to make the switch to dash0.

FAQS

Q1: What makes dash0 different from other observability tools?
It’s OTel-native, lightning-fast, and designed with transparent pricing.

Q2: Can dash0 replace multiple tools?
Yes—it unifies metrics, logs, and traces into one platform.

Q3: How does dash0 pricing work?
You pay based on telemetry volume, not seats or hosts.

Q4: Is dash0 good for Kubernetes?
Yes, it gives deep visibility into pods, workloads, and namespaces.

Q5: Who should use dash0?
Developers, SREs, and platform engineers looking for faster, simpler observability.