---
title: "Reduce Grafana Cloud Database Observability costs | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Reduce your Grafana Cloud Database Observability costs by tuning host hours, metrics, and logs."
---

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

# Reduce Grafana Cloud Database Observability costs

Database Observability costs come from host hours for each connected instance, metrics, and logs. Host hours are predictable from your instance count, so most of what you can control is telemetry volume.

To learn how each component is billed, refer to [Database Observability pricing](/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/pricing-and-usage/database-observability/).

## Review your usage

Before you change your collection configuration, identify where the cost is coming from.

1. In your Grafana Cloud stack, go to **Cost Management and Billing > Usage**.
2. Review the **Database Observability** section for host hours, and the **Metrics** and **Logs** sections for telemetry.

## Reduce host hours

You’re billed for each hour Grafana Alloy holds a connection to an instance, so the only way to reduce host hours is to stop connecting to instances you don’t need to monitor.

- **Stop monitoring an instance.** Remove it from your Alloy configuration and restart Alloy.
- **Pause the database.** If you stop a managed instance, such as an RDS or Cloud SQL instance, or shut down a server, Alloy loses connectivity and billing stops automatically.
- **Deactivate Database Observability.** To stop all Database Observability billing, deactivate it from the **Manage App** tab on the Database Observability configuration page in your Grafana Cloud stack.

Remember that each Amazon Aurora instance in a cluster counts separately, so writer and reader instances each accrue host hours.

## Reduce metrics and logs volume

Tune how Alloy collects data:

- **Increase collection intervals.** Set a longer `collect_interval` on `query_samples`, `query_details`, or `explain_plans`. Increasing `query_samples` from the default 10s to 60s reduces log volume significantly, at the cost of visibility into slow queries.
- **Disable collectors you don’t need.** Turn off `explain_plans` or `schema_details` entirely if you don’t use the Explain Plans or Schema tabs. This eliminates the logs those collectors generate.
- **Exclude system schemas.** Filter out schemas such as `rdsadmin`, `cloudsqladmin`, and `azure_sys`.
- **Exclude service accounts and monitoring users.** Stop queries from replication users, cloud admin users such as `rdsadmin` and `cloudsqladmin`, and the Alloy monitoring user from generating telemetry.

For environment specific configuration examples, including high volume and low resource presets, refer to [Tune Alloy collection](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/database-observability/configure/tune-alloy-collection/).

> Warning
> 
> Heavy use of table partitioning significantly increases telemetry volume. If your tables use extensive partitioning, for example 100 tables with 100 partitions each, [contact Grafana Cloud support](/profile/org#support) for custom sizing guidance.

## Related

- [Database Observability pricing](/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/pricing-and-usage/database-observability/)
- [Reduce Metrics costs](/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/cost-management-and-billing/analyze-costs/reduce-costs/metrics-costs/)
- [Reduce Logs costs](/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/cost-management-and-billing/analyze-costs/reduce-costs/logs-costs/)