# Grafana Tempo

Source: https://calc.onpremeasy.com/product/grafana-tempo/

## Indicative from-price range

Indicative from-price range for self-hosting Grafana Tempo on 1 server: about $24 to $112 per month (USD), as of 2026-10-19, for the reference workload (Peak spans per second: 100000; Trace retention (days): 14; Concurrent trace queries: 5). From-price by provider, each the cheapest server in that provider's own shortlist: $24 on DigitalOcean (basic-2vcpu-4gb, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, fra1); $49 on Google Cloud (e2-standard-2, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, us-central1); $63 on Amazon Web Services (c9g.large, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, us-east-1); $64 on OVHcloud (rise-1, 6 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, eu-west); $66 on Microsoft Azure (D2as_v7, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, eastus); $66 on Hetzner (AX41, 6 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-central); $262 on Servers.com (dl-01, 8 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-west).

Reference workload:
- Peak spans per second: 100000
- Trace retention (days): 14
- Concurrent trace queries: 5

Price snapshot: 2026-10-19. Currency: USD. FX snapshot: 2026-10-19.

Configuration: Low end: 1 x basic-2vcpu-4gb (DigitalOcean, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, about $24 per server per month). High end: 1 x rise-m (OVHcloud, 12 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, about $112 per server per month).

Methodology: This range is generated automatically from public provider price lists. It has not been reviewed by a person, it is not a quote, and it may differ from the total the calculator chooses for your own workload with its AI step. Method: the calculator's offer shortlist for the reference workload (the same ranking it builds before the AI step, up to 12 offers across providers; 12 here) is priced at its monthly list price in USD. The low end is the cheapest of the per-provider from-prices below and the high end is the median server of the combined shortlist, each multiplied by 1, the smallest baseline topology (monolithic). The from-price for each provider applies the same method to that provider's own shortlist (the calculator's ranking restricted to that provider), so it is the cheapest server that ranking offers there, not a recommendation. Prices are taken from the price snapshot dated 2026-10-19; prices quoted in EUR are converted with the ECB reference rate dated 2026-10-19. Servers with fewer than 2 vCPU or less than 4 GB RAM are not priced. Only server rental list prices for the product's own servers are counted: dependencies, licences, support, traffic charges, taxes and setup fees are not included.

Price sources:
- [Amazon Web Services](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonEC2/current/us-east-1/index.json)
- [DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets)
- [Google Cloud](https://cloudbilling.googleapis.com/v1/services/6F81-5844-456A/skus)
- [Hetzner](https://www.hetzner.com/_resources/app/data/app/live_data_en_EUR.json)
- [Microsoft Azure](https://prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices)
- [OVHcloud](https://eu.api.ovh.com/1.0/order/catalog/public/eco?ovhSubsidiary=FR)
- [Servers.com](https://www.servers.com/products/scalable-bare-metal)

Grafana Tempo is a high-volume, minimal-dependency distributed tracing backend that stores and retrieves traces submitted in Jaeger, Zipkin, and OpenTelemetry formats. It keeps only trace IDs in an index and stores trace data itself in cheap object storage, trading full-text search for cost efficiency at scale.

## Baseline topologies

- monolithic: 1 node minimum; roles: tempo
- microservices: 4 nodes minimum; roles: tempo-distributor, tempo-ingester, tempo-querier, tempo-compactor

## What drives the cost

- Peak spans per second: Peak trace span ingestion rate. Drives distributor and ingester CPU and memory.
- Trace retention (days): How long trace data is retained. Drives object storage capacity requirements.

## Frequently asked questions

### How much does it cost to self-host Grafana Tempo?

Indicative from-price range for self-hosting Grafana Tempo on 1 server: about $24 to $112 per month (USD), as of 2026-10-19, for the reference workload (Peak spans per second: 100000; Trace retention (days): 14; Concurrent trace queries: 5). From-price by provider, each the cheapest server in that provider's own shortlist: $24 on DigitalOcean (basic-2vcpu-4gb, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, fra1); $49 on Google Cloud (e2-standard-2, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, us-central1); $63 on Amazon Web Services (c9g.large, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, us-east-1); $64 on OVHcloud (rise-1, 6 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, eu-west); $66 on Microsoft Azure (D2as_v7, 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, eastus); $66 on Hetzner (AX41, 6 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-central); $262 on Servers.com (dl-01, 8 vCPU, 64 GB RAM, eu-west). This is an automatically generated indicative figure from public price lists (price snapshot 2026-10-19), not a quote.

### What drives the cost of self-hosting Grafana Tempo?

The sizing inputs the calculator uses for Grafana Tempo are: Peak spans per second; Trace retention (days). Cost also depends on the number of servers and the provider chosen.

### What is the minimum number of servers for Grafana Tempo?

The smallest baseline topology in the calculator's profile for Grafana Tempo is monolithic (1 server). Other baseline topologies: microservices (4 servers minimum). The reference range above is computed for 1 server.

Size Grafana Tempo for your own workload: https://calc.onpremeasy.com/?product=grafana-tempo

## Sources

- https://grafana.com/oss/tempo/
- https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/
- https://github.com/grafana/tempo