---
title: "Traces pricing | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Learn how Grafana Cloud Traces bills for data processed, written, and retained."
---

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

# Traces pricing

Grafana Cloud Traces bills on the volume of trace data you send and keep, measured in gigabytes.

For current rates, refer to the [pricing page](/pricing/#traces).

## How Traces is billed

Three dimensions make up your traces bill:

**GBs processed**

Incurred when Grafana Cloud receives and optimizes the traces you send. This is measured before any Adaptive Telemetry optimization.

**GBs written**

The total gigabytes written to Grafana Cloud each month. If you use Adaptive Telemetry or sampling to reduce what you keep, only the resulting data is written and billed.

**GBs retained**

How long your traces are kept in Grafana Cloud, billed per gigabyte for each additional retention increment beyond the minimum.

## Definitions

**Processed vs written:** Processed volume is what arrives at Grafana Cloud. Written volume is what’s stored after optimization. Sampling and Adaptive Traces reduce written volume.

## How usage is calculated

Your bill is determined by the gigabytes processed, written, and retained per month, and the number of months of retention.

Traces generated from other products, such as the spans Application Observability produces, are billed here at standard Traces rates.

## Special considerations

### Retention

The minimum retention period is 14 days for free accounts and 30 days for paid accounts. Retaining data beyond 30 days is charged per gigabyte for each additional 30-day increment.

Retention is customizable per stack. To customize it, contact Support.

> Note
> 
> Retention period changes aren’t retroactive. After you increase retention, telemetry is stored under the new period, but data already outside the old retention period isn’t recovered.

### Discarded spans

Spans discarded because they exceed your limits aren’t written and aren’t billed. Refer to [Usage limits](/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/pricing-and-usage/usage-limits/) for the traces limits that apply.

## View your usage

1. In your Grafana Cloud stack, go to **Cost Management and Billing > Usage**.
2. Under **Product Breakdown**, select **Traces**.

## Related

- [Traces pricing page](/pricing/#traces)
- [Reduce Traces costs](/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/cost-management-and-billing/analyze-costs/reduce-costs/traces-costs/)
- [Usage limits](/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/pricing-and-usage/usage-limits/)