Datadog is a popular SaaS cloud monitoring solution that enables multiple observability use cases by collecting, monitoring, and analyzing telemetry data from various sources. However, some organizations are shifting away from Datadog for log analytics in favor of the open-source tool Grafana + Loki, citing high costs, restrictive data retention limits, vendor lock-in, and a desire for greater flexibility and scalability. Grafana is an analytics platform that allows users to ingest data from various sources, query the data, and build customized visualizations, while Loki is an open-source log aggregation system designed for horizontal scalability, cost-efficiency, high availability, and ease-of-use. By using Grafana + Loki, developers can reduce costs, avoid data retention limits, enjoy flexibility and scalability, benefit from community support, and avoid vendor lock-in, making it a viable alternative to Datadog for log analytics.