Logs · Updated 10 November 2026 · 9 min read

Papertrail alternatives for app logs in 2026

Where to send app logs instead of SolarWinds Papertrail: Better Stack, Scaleway Cockpit, OVHcloud Logs Data Platform, Grafana Cloud, Eurobase and self-hosted Loki, with prices and storage regions.

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A close match for Papertrail's quick setup is Better Stack: hosted logs, a small free tier and a German data region, run by an American company. For a European company holding your logs, Scaleway Cockpit offers a managed Loki endpoint and OVHcloud Logs Data Platform offers full-text search on OpenSearch. Grafana Cloud fits teams already on Grafana. Apps hosted on Eurobase get project logs with the plan, and a self-hosted Loki keeps everything on servers you choose.

SolarWinds sells Papertrail from $5 per GB a month and doesn't name a storage region for your logs.

Papertrail and the alternatives side by side

Platform	Company	Where logs live	Free allowance	Paid pricing
Papertrail	SolarWinds, United States	Not stated	30-day trial with 100 GB	From $5 per GB a month
Better Stack	Delaware, United States	Germany, United States or Singapore, chosen per source	3 GB a month, kept 3 days	In Germany, $0.10 per GB ingested and $0.05 per GB a month kept
Scaleway Cockpit	France	Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw or Milan	Logs from Scaleway resources, kept 7 days	Your own logs billed per GB ingested
OVHcloud Logs Data Platform	France	Not stated	First GB each month	$1.04 per GiB a month up to 100 GB, then $0.41
Grafana Cloud	New York, United States	EU regions on AWS, Google Cloud or Azure	50 GB a month, kept 14 days	$19 a month platform fee, then usage
Eurobase	Warsaw, Poland	European infrastructure run by Scaleway	256 MiB a month	Included in €10 or €20 a month + VAT
Self-hosted Loki	You	Any server you pick	No licence fee	Your servers and storage

Prices are from each provider's own page, checked on 9 and 10 November 2026.

What to compare before you switch

How you send logs today. Many Papertrail setups forward syslog from servers or use the Heroku add-on. Check that the new tool accepts what your apps already emit, or budget time to install an agent such as Fluent Bit or Grafana Alloy.
The billing unit. Papertrail charges per GB sent each month. Others split ingestion and storage, or bill only what's stored, so run your real monthly volume through each price list.
What happens at the limit. On Papertrail you choose whether logs stop or keep flowing as usage at a higher rate. Know which behaviour the new tool defaults to before a busy day hits.
Search depth. Loki-based tools index labels and scan the text. OpenSearch indexes the full text, which helps when you search for words you didn't plan for.
Who can be ordered to hand over data. An EU region run by a US company can still fall under US law. Read EU region vs EU company if your contracts care.

What Papertrail offers today

Papertrail gives you a web log viewer with live tail, team-wide saved searches, search alerts, a REST API and long-term archives. SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC runs the site, and the plan starts at $5 per GB a month. When you hit your limit you pick: logs stop, or they continue as usage up to 200% extra at a per-GB price 30% higher. Archives are downloadable text files copied to Amazon S3. A Heroku add-on still exists for one-click setup.

SolarWinds' privacy notice says personal data may be transferred to or accessed in the United States and other places where it or its service providers operate. Logs often carry IP addresses and user IDs, which matters if you've promised customers that data stays in Europe.

1. Better Stack

Better Stack bundles logs with uptime checks, on-call and incident management. You pick a data region for each source, and Germany is one of the options. You can also point it at your own S3 bucket. Behind it is Better Stack, Inc., incorporated in Delaware.

Best for: small teams who want something as quick to set up as Papertrail, plus uptime alerts in the same tool.
Price: 3 GB of logs a month free, kept for 3 days. With the Germany region, $0.10 per GB ingested and $0.05 per GB a month for retention. Bundles with 30-day retention start at $25 a month billed yearly.
What it lacks: a company based in Europe. Your logs can sit in Germany while the operator stays American.

2. Scaleway Cockpit

Scaleway, a French cloud provider, stores logs in Loki behind its Cockpit service and shows them in Grafana. For app logs you make a custom data source in one region, hand a push token to any Loki-compatible agent and ship from any machine, inside Scaleway or not. That data isn't copied to another region.

Best for: teams that want a European company to run their log store, with standard Loki agents.
Price: logs from Scaleway's own resources are free and kept for 7 days. Your own logs are billed per GB ingested, and retention can be set from 1 day to 5 years, with days past the free 7 billed by stored volume.
What it lacks: a published per-GB rate. The worked example in Scaleway's docs is labelled illustrative, so get a quote before you move large volumes.

3. OVHcloud Logs Data Platform

This is OVHcloud's hosted OpenSearch stack for logs. Graylog receives the streams over standard protocols, and you read them in Graylog, OpenSearch Dashboards or Grafana. Senders can be in any cloud or on your own hardware.

Best for: teams that want full-text search and archives kept for years.
Price: the Standard plan has no monthly fee and the first GB each month is free. Then $1.04 per GiB a month up to 100 GB, and $0.41 above. Retention is 14 days, 1 month, 3 months or 1 year, and cold storage keeps daily archives for 1, 2, 5 or 10 years. A dedicated Enterprise cluster costs $313 a month plus $209 to set up.
What it lacks: a stated location for your log data on its product page.

4. Grafana Cloud

Grafana Labs, a New York company, sells hosted Loki next to metrics, traces and dashboards. In the EU you can pick Germany, Ireland or Sweden on AWS, Belgium on Google Cloud or the Netherlands on Azure.

Best for: teams that already use Grafana dashboards and want logs next to their metrics.
Price: the free tier takes 50 GB of logs a month with 14 days of retention. Pro has a $19 monthly platform fee that includes 50 GB and 30 days of retention, then starts at $0.05 per GB processed, $0.40 per GB written and $0.10 per GB retained.
What it lacks: a European company at any layer. Both Grafana Labs and the cloud under each EU region are American.

5. Eurobase built-in logs

Eurobase hosts web apps; it isn't a log service you send data to. If you move the app as well, the logs come along: each project's Logs page collects deployment, HTTP request, container, function, storage and Worker entries, and you can narrow them by resource, status or time range. Container output reaches that page within a few minutes, and your coding agent can query the same entries through the MCP server.

Best for: apps that move to Eurobase anyway, so logging stops being a separate bill.
Price: included. The Free plan gives 256 MiB of logs a month, Starter at €10 a month + VAT gives 1 GiB, and Pro at €20 a month + VAT gives 5 GiB. There are no usage charges today: work over a limit is refused rather than billed.
What it lacks: a way in for logs from servers elsewhere. There's no documented syslog input, forwarding, search alerts or long-term archive. History is capped at 30 days and the newest 10,000 entries of each kind.

6. Self-hosted Loki

Grafana Loki is open source. Instead of indexing every word, it indexes a few labels per stream and keeps the log text as compressed chunks in object storage, so storage stays cheap. Install it on a European server or Kubernetes cluster of your choice and aim your agents at it.

Best for: teams with operations skills who want full control over where logs sit and how long they stay.
Price: no licence fee, only servers and object storage. As a reference point, Hetzner, a German host, lists cloud servers from €5.49 a month excl. VAT in Helsinki and €6.49 in Falkenstein or Nuremberg, but its cheapest plans were shown as unavailable to order on 10 November 2026.
What it lacks: a vendor to call. Upgrades, full disks and backups are your job.

How to move off Papertrail

Note your monthly volume and retention from the Papertrail dashboard.
Set up the new destination and send a copy of your logs there alongside Papertrail for a week.
Recreate your saved searches and alerts, and test that they fire.
Remove the Papertrail syslog target or Heroku drain once the new tool shows everything.
Download any Papertrail archives you must keep before you cancel.

Frequently asked questions

Is Papertrail still available?

Yes. SolarWinds sells it as SolarWinds Papertrail, from $5 per GB a month, with a 30-day free trial that includes 100 GB.

Does Papertrail store logs in the EU?

Papertrail doesn't name a storage region. Archives are copied to Amazon S3, and SolarWinds' privacy notice allows transfers of personal data to the United States. If you need logs held in Europe, pick a tool with a stated European region.

What's the cheapest Papertrail alternative?

At low volume, the free tiers of Better Stack, Grafana Cloud and OVHcloud cost nothing. Above that, compare your real monthly gigabytes against each price list, because they bill ingestion and storage differently. Self-hosted Loki has no licence fee but costs servers and your time.

What can replace the Papertrail Heroku add-on?

Any service that accepts a Heroku log drain can replace it. If you're leaving Heroku as well, European Heroku alternatives compares hosts, and some, like Eurobase, include logs with the app.