What does Datadog RUM pricing depend on?

Datadog Real User Monitoring (RUM) pricing is primarily based on the number of user sessions. This approach reflects the actual usage of the monitoring service as it is designed to focus on real user interactions with applications. By pricing according to user sessions, Datadog can scale its services based on how many users are actively engaging with an application, which is crucial for businesses that want to analyze user behavior, performance bottlenecks, and overall application experience.

Using user sessions as the pricing metric allows organizations to gain insights that are directly tied to their user engagement levels. Businesses pay for the amount of traffic and user interactions that they analyze, making it a flexible and fair model. This metric aligns well with the core purpose of RUM, which is to capture and report on the end user's experience in real-time.

While other aspects, such as API calls, synthetic tests, or number of servers, are important for monitoring different components of an application or infrastructure, they do not directly represent user interactions or sessions. Thus, they do not align with the specific focus of RUM pricing, which is centered around real user engagement.