Direct answers to what buyers actually ask.

Obsfly is a database performance monitoring (DBM) tool that covers 9 database engines — Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, ClickHouse, Oracle, SQL Server, Cassandra, Elasticsearch — through a single Go agent. It is a modern alternative to Datadog DBM, pganalyze, and SolarWinds DPA, available as SaaS, BYOC (data plane in your VPC), or Sovereign (air-gapped on-prem).

Free tier is permanent at 3 databases / 7-day retention with no credit card. Team is $39 per database per month with 30-day retention. Business is $89 per database per month with 90-day retention, AI insights, and SSO. BYOC is $5,000 per month platform + $59 per database per month. Sovereign / on-prem starts at $80,000 annual depending on fleet size.

Yes. Datadog DBM at public list pricing is approximately $105/database/month, and DBM requires Datadog APM and Infrastructure modules to function. Obsfly Team at $39/database/month with no required dependencies is roughly 1/3 of Datadog DBM’s effective per-database cost. For a 50-database / 30-host fleet, Datadog DBM is ~$5,490/month at list; Obsfly Team is ~$1,950/month. Full breakdown: Datadog DBM cost anatomy.

PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, ClickHouse, Oracle, SQL Server, Apache Cassandra, and Elasticsearch. All 9 engines run through the same Go agent — there are no separate per-database installers.

Yes. The data plane (agent, receiver, Kafka, ClickHouse, query proxy) runs entirely inside the customer’s VPC; the control plane (UI, auth, billing, AI) runs in Obsfly’s cloud. They communicate only over authenticated mTLS gRPC. Raw query text and PII never leave the customer’s perimeter. Datadog DBM does not offer BYOC. See /byoc.

Yes, in Sovereign mode. A single Helm chart deploys all components inside the customer’s environment. License validation is offline against a compiled-in public key. Phone-home heartbeat can be disabled. License renewals are S/MIME-signed files delivered out-of-band. This is the deployment most banks, defense, and regulated gov customers require. See /sovereign.

Yes — the Free tier is permanent, not time-limited: 3 databases, 7-day retention, no credit card. Paid Team and Business tiers are billed monthly with no annual commitment.

The agent is a single statically-linked Go binary, ~15 MB at rest, typical CPU usage <1%on a database host, memory footprint ~30-60 MB. It is not a Python agent like Datadog’s; it does not require pip, virtualenvs, or per-DB collectors.

Plan narration (explain why a query plan is slow in plain English), index recommendations grounded in actual workload, and SQL rewrite suggestions. Default model is Anthropic Claude. BYO LLM endpoints are supported in BYOC and Sovereign deployments — your model, your VPC, no query text leaves your perimeter. See AI for query optimization 2026.

Limited. Obsfly is database-only. Native trace-to-DBM correlation works best when both the APM and DBM tools are the same vendor (e.g., Datadog APM + Datadog DBM). Obsfly can ingest OpenTelemetry trace IDs against query samples, but does not provide a unified APM-to-query view. If trace correlation is your top requirement and you already use Datadog APM, staying on Datadog DBM may be the right call.

SOC2 Type 1 audit is in flight (Phase 4). For HIPAA and GDPR-sensitive workloads, the BYOC and Sovereign deployment modes are designed specifically so that no PII or query text leaves the customer’s environment — which is the deciding compliance factor for most regulated buyers. Datadog DBM, which sends raw query text to vendor-managed storage, cannot meet this bar.

On Cloud (SaaS)tier, telemetry is stored in Obsfly’s US or EU region (you choose). On BYOC and Sovereign, all telemetry — including raw query text — stays in your own cloud account or on-prem environment. Obsfly’s control plane never has access to it.

Most teams have parallel coverage running in 30 minutes — install the Go agent on each database host, point it at the Obsfly receiver, and historical data starts populating immediately. Both agents are read-only and can run side-by-side during a 2-4 week evaluation; cut the Datadog DBM contract at renewal once parity is verified.

Partially. The license-validation module (packages/license) is open source by design so customers can audit phone-home behavior before purchase. The agent and core service binaries are source-available under a non-OSS license. The data formats and protocols are documented and stable.

If you are Postgres-only and value advisor depth (index suggestions, EXPLAIN visualizer, log correlation), pganalyze is excellent. If you have or will have multiple database engines, want BYOC, or want to spend roughly 1/3 less per database, Obsfly is the better fit. Full breakdown: pganalyze vs Obsfly.