---
title: "Understand your Grafana Cloud Application Observability invoice | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Explanation of Grafana Cloud Application Observability billing"
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# Understand your Grafana Cloud Application Observability invoice

Application Observability pricing is based on a combination of host hours and telemetry usage. To calculate your monthly cost, visit our [pricing page](/pricing/#application-observability) to see the actual rates.

> Note
> 
> This pricing information applies to customers who’s plans started February 13th, 2026 or later. For customers who started using Application Observability plans before February 13, 2026, the pricing model is $0.04 per host hour with included telemetry credits (1.5 active series and 0.02 GB of traces per host hour). Standard pricing for metrics and traces applies if you exceed included usage.

- Host hours: refer to [Application Observability pricing](/pricing/#application-observability) for the latest rates.
- Metrics: refer to [Grafana Cloud Metrics pricing](/pricing/#metrics) for the latest rates.
- Traces: refer to [Grafana Cloud Traces pricing](/pricing/#traces) for the latest rates.
- Logs: refer to [Grafana Cloud Logs pricing](/pricing/#logs) for the latest rates.
- Profiles: refer to [Grafana Cloud Profiles pricing](/pricing/#profiles) for the latest rates.

You pay for telemetry (metrics, traces, logs, profiles) separately from host hour usage.

You can view and manage your costs directly from your Grafana Cloud instance using the **Cost Management and Billing** application. To learn more, refer to the following topics:

- Set up [Cost Management and Billing](/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/set-up/)
- View your [usage and cost dashboards](/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/understand-usage-cost/)
- Create [usage alerts](/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/usage-cost-alerts/)
- [View estimated costs](/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/manage-invoices/understand-your-invoice/#cost-management-and-billing) for the current month.

## What is a host hour?

A Host is a physical or virtual operating system instance that is sending observability signals including traces and span metrics. A host is considered active if it has sent observability signals in the last 15 minutes. Billable host hours is the total number of host hours measured during the month.

By billing based on active host hours, customers are not billed for peak host usage (99th percentile), but rather the actual host hours consumed during the billing month.

## Telemetry credits and overages

> Note
> 
> Telemetry credits and overages apply only to customers who started their Application Observability plans before February 13, 2026.

Customers in older pricing plans receive a credit of 1.5 active series and 0.02 GB of traces per host hour (approximately 1,080 active series and 14.4 GB of traces per host active for 720 hours per month). Most customers stay within this included usage. If you exceed the included amount, you pay standard rates for metrics and traces. For more details, refer to:

- [Understand your Grafana Cloud Metrics invoice](/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/manage-invoices/understand-your-invoice/metrics-invoice/)
- [Understand your Grafana Cloud Logs, Traces, and Profiles invoices](/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/manage-invoices/understand-your-invoice/logs-invoice/)

## When does the host hour based pricing apply?

Host hours based pricing is only applicable for customers using the Application Observability product offering in Grafana Cloud.

For customers not using the Application Observability product offering in Grafana Cloud and instead building their own dashboards, alerts, and workflows to monitor applications, standard pricing for Grafana Cloud Metrics, Logs, Traces, Profiles, and Visualization applies and there are no charges based on host hours.

## How does host hour pricing work for serverless environments?

For customers using Application Observability in serverless environments, usage is billed based on the telemetry ingested into Grafana Cloud.

Non-exhaustive list of serverless environments that are subject to telemetry-based billing:

Expand table

| Provider            | Product                         | Type        |
|---------------------|---------------------------------|-------------|
| **AWS**             | Lambda                          | FaaS        |
| AWS                 | Fargate                         | CaaS        |
| AWS                 | App Runner                      | CaaS        |
| **Google Cloud**    | Cloud Functions (Gen 2)         | FaaS        |
| Google Cloud        | Cloud Run                       | CaaS        |
| **Microsoft Azure** | Functions                       | FaaS        |
| Microsoft Azure     | Container Apps                  | CaaS        |
| **IBM Cloud**       | Functions                       | FaaS        |
| IBM Cloud           | Code Engine                     | CaaS        |
| **Oracle Cloud**    | Functions                       | FaaS        |
| Oracle Cloud        | Container Instances             | CaaS        |
| **Cloudflare**      | Workers                         | FaaS (edge) |
| **Netlify**         | Functions &amp; Edge Functions  | FaaS        |
| **Vercel**          | Serverless &amp; Edge Functions | FaaS        |
| **Alibaba Cloud**   | Function Compute                | FaaS        |
| Alibaba Cloud       | ACK Serverless (ASK)            | CaaS        |

> Note
> 
> Contact [Grafana Support](/docs/grafana-cloud/fundamentals/support/) if you rely on one of these technologies so we can validate your Grafana environment is correctly configured. When you open the ticket, use the subject “Enable Application Observability in a serverless environment”.

## Invoice calculations

Host hours are determined by multiplying the number of active hosts by the number of active hours per day and by the number of days per month.

Telemetry costs vary based on actual metrics, traces, logs, and profiles consumption. To learn more about how these costs are calculated, refer to:

- [Understand your Grafana Cloud Metrics invoice](/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/understand-your-invoice/metrics-invoice/)
- [Understand your Grafana Cloud Logs, Traces, and Profiles invoices](/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/understand-your-invoice/logs-invoice/)

To view estimated costs for the current month, you can use the **Cost Management and Billing** application in your Grafana Cloud instance. For more information, refer to [View estimated costs](/docs/grafana-cloud/cost-management-and-billing/manage-invoices/understand-your-invoice/#cost-management-and-billing).

## Find your invoice

You can view your past invoices from the [Cloud Portal](/grafana-cloud/account-management/cloud-portal/).

To access your invoices:

1. Sign in to Grafana Cloud.
2. From the left navigation, select [**Billing** &gt; **Invoices**](/profile/org/invoices).
