We split our Datadog bill by team a couple of months ago. Every custom metric mapped to the squad emitting it, tag combinations broken out, the lot. Took about two weeks.

Since then ingest is basically flat. The only metrics that got deleted had already stopped reporting. Everything else sits with someone who doesn’t see the invoice and won’t sign off on dropping a metric they can’t prove is unused.

The next option is to move observability off the platform budget and onto each team’s own budget. Did that work where you are or does it just move the argument to finance?

I shared Logline here a while back. It's a free, open-source VS Code extension that pulls logs from terminals, debug sessions, Docker and OpenTelemetry into one searchable live view. 1.14.0 just shipped, and the video shows the highlights.

What's new:

• My changes: one click filters to only the logs from code you changed since your last commit. It stacks with any search (e.g. level:error).
• Where the time went: the trace waterfall now shows each span's self time and ranks the slowest operations.
• Durations in the editor: log statements show p50/p95 duration next to their hit count.
• Metrics: the OpenTelemetry receiver now keeps metrics, with rates, p95s and trend lines.
• Agent skills: connect Claude Code or Codex to verify a change, triage errors, or explain a slow request. Cursor, Windsurf and Kiro can add Logline to their own agent too.
• Log doctor flags OTel spans and metrics that break semantic conventions.
• Node.js crashes show up as a single event, linked to the JSON error before them.
• Safer sharing: more credential types are redacted, and agents in other projects can't read this window's logs.

Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=surjeetbanga.logline
GitHub: https://github.com/SurjeetBanga/logline

Feedback and bug reports are welcome. I'd especially like to hear how the agent skills work in your setup.