How to use this calculator
- Enter or choose ingest per day.
- Enter or choose days per month.
- Enter or choose price per GB ingested.
- Enter or choose free allowance per day.
- Enter or choose fixed monthly fees.
- The monthly cost updates as you type. Use Copy result or Share to keep it.
Method
Billable GB = max(0, GB/day − Free GB/day) × Days; Monthly = Billable GB × Price + Fixed; Annual = Monthly × 12
- Price
- your per-GB ingest price
- Fixed
- monthly fees not tied to volume
Worked example
- Billable = (50 − 5) × 30 = 1,350 GB.
- Ingest = 1,350 × $2 = $2,700; plus $500 fixed = $3,200 a month.
- Annual = 3,200 × 12 = $38,400; effective cost = 3,200 ÷ 1,500 GB = $2.1333 per GB.
At 50 GB a day and $2 per GB with 5 GB a day free and $500 in fees, the SIEM costs $3,200 a month.
What the result means
Ingest is usually the biggest lever: filtering noisy sources before ingestion cuts cost directly. Compare commitment tiers by putting their effective per-GB price into the same calculation.
Assumptions and limits
- Daily volume is the same every day of the month.
- Prices are flat per GB; tiered or commitment pricing must be converted to an effective rate.
- Retention beyond the included period, archive storage, search compute and taxes are not included unless you add them as fixed fees.
Questions
Why is no price filled in for my vendor?
Prices vary by vendor, region, tier and contract, and change often. Enter the rate you actually pay.
How do I estimate GB per day?
Use the Log Retention Storage Calculator to convert events per second and event size into raw GB per day.