---
title: "AWS CloudWatch Dashboard Cost Efficiency: Logs vs. Custom Metrics"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/aws-cloudwatch-dashboard-cost-efficiency-logs-vs-custom-metrics-nc0lgmaa1
source_url: https://cloudonaut.io/aws-cloudwatch-dashboard-cost-efficiency-logs-vs-custom-metrics/
type: article
source: "cloudonaut"
published: 2025-11-26T09:43:14.320Z
updated: 2025-11-26T09:43:37.643Z
tags: ["aws", "observability", "monitoring", "finops", "aws-cloudwatch"]
reading_time: 4
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# AWS CloudWatch Dashboard Cost Efficiency: Logs vs. Custom Metrics

**[cloudonaut](https://daily.dev/sources/cloudonaut)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Switching CloudWatch dashboards from custom metrics to logs can reduce costs by 93%, from $1.19 to $0.07 per metric monthly. Custom metrics cost $0.30 per metric plus API request charges, while logs cost only $0.0025 for ingestion and $0.075 for queries. The logs approach works well for dashboards but has tradeoffs: slower widget loading (5-10 seconds vs 1 second), no native alarming capabilities, fewer widget types, and different query languages (SQL/PPL vs metric math expressions). Best suited for on-demand analysis rather than automated alerting.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://cloudonaut.io/aws-cloudwatch-dashboard-cost-efficiency-logs-vs-custom-metrics/>

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---

Tags: [#aws](https://daily.dev/tags/aws), [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability), [#monitoring](https://daily.dev/tags/monitoring), [#finops](https://daily.dev/tags/finops), [#aws-cloudwatch](https://daily.dev/tags/aws-cloudwatch)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/aws-cloudwatch-dashboard-cost-efficiency-logs-vs-custom-metrics-nc0lgmaa1)