How We Cut Datadog Bills by 60% Without Losing Observability

Last year our Datadog bill hit $38k/month. Leadership asked me to cut it in half. Here's how we got to $15k without losing a single useful signal. The 5 moves that worked 1. Dropped custom metrics with zero dashboard references. We had 2,400 custom metrics. Only 600 were actually graphed or alerted on. We stopped sending the other 1,800. Saved 30%. 2. Aggressive log tier management. Hot logs for 3 days, warm for 7, then cold. Most of our log cost came from full indexing of debug logs nobody quer