Cloudflare Log Explorer: Pricing and Alternatives
For years, the answer to “how do I keep Cloudflare logs longer?” was “Logpush them somewhere else.” Log Explorer changes that: Cloudflare stores the logs for you and lets you search them in the dashboard.
Here’s what it costs, who can use it, and when an alternative makes more sense.
What Log Explorer is
In Cloudflare’s words: “Store and explore your Cloudflare logs directly within the Cloudflare dashboard or API.”
- No external storage. No S3 bucket, no SIEM, no pipeline.
- Search in the dashboard. Query logs where you already manage the zone.
- API access. Pull results into your own tooling.
- Dataset control. Choose which log datasets to store.
Pricing and availability
From Cloudflare’s documentation:
| Who can buy it | Contract (Enterprise) customers |
| Storage price | $0.10 per GB per month |
| Maximum retention | Up to two years |
Pricing is per GB stored, per month, so the bill grows every month until you hit your retention limit.
Worked example
Assume 100 GB of logs per month, kept for 12 months. Ask your Cloudflare account team how stored GB is measured for your datasets; compressed and raw sizes differ a lot.
| Month | GB stored | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100 | $10 |
| 6 | 600 | $60 |
| 12 (steady state) | 1,200 | $120 |
At 1 TB per month held for a year, steady state is $1,200/month. Two years of retention doubles it.
How it compares
| Log Explorer | S3 + Athena | Datadog | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan needed | Contract | Enterprise (Logpush) | Enterprise (Logpush) |
| Storage price | $0.10/GB-month | $0.023/GB-month | Per event indexed |
| Setup | Minimal | Days to a sprint | Moderate |
| Query tool | Cloudflare dashboard, API | SQL (Athena) | Datadog search |
| Max retention | 2 years | Unlimited | 15 days standard; longer via Flex or archives |
Where Log Explorer shines
- You’re already an Enterprise customer
- You want raw, per-request logs without running any infrastructure
- Two years of retention covers your compliance and investigation needs
Where it doesn’t fit
- You’re not on a contract plan. On Free, Pro, and Business plans, Log Explorer isn’t available.
- Very high volume. At multiple terabytes a month, $0.10/GB-month is about 4x S3 Standard.
- You need more than two years.
For non-Enterprise teams
Most small teams don’t need raw request logs. They need to answer questions like “what did traffic look like last quarter?” and “has this IP hit us before?” The analytics Cloudflare exposes on every plan can answer those, if you keep them before they expire.
That’s what MetricKeeper does: connect a read-only token and it archives your Cloudflare analytics on a schedule, with no contract required.