Our take
Pick Better Stack if on-call teams who will stay on Free at $0 (10 monitors, 1 status page, 3 GB logs) while they open a first monitor, then buy a Responder seat at $29/month billed yearly ($34 monthly) when someone has to be paged. Pick Plain if product teams who will stay on Foundation at $45 / user / month billed annually (up to 5 member seats, 1,000 credits) while they open a first Threads list, then buy Horizon
hosted uptime-plus-telemetry desk
Best for
Better Stack Monitors you start at $0
Plain Threads you start on a printed $ seat
Free plan
Better Stack $0 · /month. 10 monitors & heartbeats. 1 status page. Slack & email alerts. 100,000 exceptions/month. 5,000 session replays. 3 GB logs and traces retained 3 days. 30 GB metrics. 3 GB web events / 3 days
Plain No free plan
Lowest paid
Better Stack Uptime overage $25/mo
Plain Horizon $99/mo yearly
Next step up
Better Stack Telemetry Nano (Europe) $30/mo
Plain
Coding agent
Better Stack
Plain Sidekick
Runs where
Better Stack Hosted
Plain Hosted
Watch out
Better Stack Free is 10 monitors and 3 GB / 3 days
Plain Foundation annual $45 is a member seat, not unlimited humans
Last checked
Better Stack 2026-10-23 · betterstack.com/pricing
Plain 2026-10-23 · plain.com/pricing
on-call teams who will stay on Free at $0 (10 monitors, 1 status page, 3 GB logs) while they open a first monitor, then buy a Responder seat at $29/month billed yearly ($34 monthly) when someone has to be paged.
Read the Better Stack pageproduct teams who will stay on Foundation at $45 / user / month billed annually (up to 5 member seats, 1,000 credits) while they open a first Threads list, then buy Horizon at $99 / user / month when they need more complex workflows.
Read the Plain page