Why engineering teams choose Last9 vs Sumo Logic
Both have an AI assistant and an MCP server. Through Last9's MCP server an agent queries metrics, logs, and traces, adds drop rules, and edits dashboards, and the Last9 agent runs on your model provider with no per-investigation charge. Sumo Logic's MCP server searches logs only, and on Flex every search its AI runs is charged as a scan. Sumo Logic keeps Cloud SIEM and Cloud SOAR beside the logs.
100+ native integrations, OpenTelemetry-first. A Last9 engineer runs the move with your team.
Named a Gartner® Cool Vendor in AI for SRE and Observability, cited for its unified telemetry platform.
The Last9 agent runs on your model provider, with no per-query or per-investigation charge.
One licence, in your own cloud account, with the infrastructure on your own cloud bill.
At a glance
Last9 vs Sumo Logic at a glance
The questions engineering teams ask when they compare the two. Sumo Logic runs only as a cloud service, so one product is compared.
Does it have an MCP server for coding agents?
Yes, hosted, since March 2025, for any MCP client. An agent can act through it: add drop rules and edit dashboards, with metrics, logs, and traces to query
Yes, since July 2026. It writes dashboards and detection rules, searches logs only, and is not available in Zurich or the AWS European Sovereign Cloud
What does the AI cost?
No per-query or per-investigation charge. Ask the Last9 agent as often as an incident needs
10 prompts per user per day, then DojoAI credits. On Flex, every search the AI runs is charged as a scan
Can the AI use our model provider, in our own cloud?
Yes, any model provider or inference endpoint. The Last9 agent runs inside your own cloud account and picks the model for each step
No. Dojo AI runs on foundation models that Sumo Logic hosts on Amazon Bedrock
How is it priced?
One licence. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill, at your negotiated rates
In credits. On Flex, log ingest has no charge, and each search is charged by the data it scans
Can I filter telemetry before I pay to store it?
Yes, for metrics, logs, and traces, from one set of rules. Drop, remap, redact, forward, and aggregate them at ingest, from the UI or Terraform
Per signal: processing rules for logs, but not for Kubernetes sources, and transformation rules for metrics. Traces are filtered in the collector
How much metric cardinality can I keep?
No hard limit. 20M series per metric per day by default, raised on request, with no sampling and no charge per label or metric name
50M unique series a week on long-term retention. At the limit, the fastest-growing sources are disabled, and their data is lost
Which query languages does it use?
PromQL and LogQL, or none: build log queries in the query builder, or ask in plain English
Its own pipe-based language for logs and traces, and another for metrics. Mobot writes log queries only
Can it run in our own cloud account?
Yes. Last9 runs in your own cloud account, on AWS or GCP in any region, and manages it for you, including the AI
No. It runs in Sumo Logic's own deployments, including FedRAMP Moderate and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud
What about security analytics?
Run both: Last9 takes your observability telemetry, and your SIEM keeps security detection and response. Last9 is an observability platform, not a SIEM
Cloud SIEM and Cloud SOAR run beside the logs, and a SOC Analyst Agent continues investigations
| Capability | Last9 | Sumo Logic |
|---|---|---|
| Does it have an MCP server for coding agents? | Yes, hosted, since March 2025, for any MCP client. An agent can act through it: add drop rules and edit dashboards, with metrics, logs, and traces to query | Yes, since July 2026. It writes dashboards and detection rules, searches logs only, and is not available in Zurich or the AWS European Sovereign Cloud |
| What does the AI cost? | No per-query or per-investigation charge. Ask the Last9 agent as often as an incident needs | 10 prompts per user per day, then DojoAI credits. On Flex, every search the AI runs is charged as a scan |
| Can the AI use our model provider, in our own cloud? | Yes, any model provider or inference endpoint. The Last9 agent runs inside your own cloud account and picks the model for each step | No. Dojo AI runs on foundation models that Sumo Logic hosts on Amazon Bedrock |
| How is it priced? | One licence. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill, at your negotiated rates | In credits. On Flex, log ingest has no charge, and each search is charged by the data it scans |
| Can I filter telemetry before I pay to store it? | Yes, for metrics, logs, and traces, from one set of rules. Drop, remap, redact, forward, and aggregate them at ingest, from the UI or Terraform | Per signal: processing rules for logs, but not for Kubernetes sources, and transformation rules for metrics. Traces are filtered in the collector |
| How much metric cardinality can I keep? | No hard limit. 20M series per metric per day by default, raised on request, with no sampling and no charge per label or metric name | 50M unique series a week on long-term retention. At the limit, the fastest-growing sources are disabled, and their data is lost |
| Which query languages does it use? | PromQL and LogQL, or none: build log queries in the query builder, or ask in plain English | Its own pipe-based language for logs and traces, and another for metrics. Mobot writes log queries only |
| Can it run in our own cloud account? | Yes. Last9 runs in your own cloud account, on AWS or GCP in any region, and manages it for you, including the AI | No. It runs in Sumo Logic's own deployments, including FedRAMP Moderate and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud |
| What about security analytics? | Run both: Last9 takes your observability telemetry, and your SIEM keeps security detection and response. Last9 is an observability platform, not a SIEM | Cloud SIEM and Cloud SOAR run beside the logs, and a SOC Analyst Agent continues investigations |
Differences
Where Last9 and Sumo Logic differ
Three places the two platforms take a different approach, with the tradeoffs stated.
AI on your model provider, with no meter on its searches
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Through the hosted MCP server, an agent queries metrics, logs, and traces, then adds a drop rule to stop ingesting the noisy source it found, or edits the dashboard it used. It works with any MCP client.
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The production agent, Last9, responds to pages with context from Slack, Linear, and PagerDuty. It runs on your model provider or inference endpoint and picks the model for each step. There is no per-query or per-investigation charge, and customer data is never used for training.
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Click a point on a chart, a table row, an alert, or an exception, and choose Ask Last9 AI. The investigation starts from that value, in its service context.
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The Coding Agents view puts Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, and Codex side by side, with cost per developer, outliers, and week-over-week change. Agents Monitoring covers your own LLM apps on OpenTelemetry GenAI conventions.
Sumo Logic
Mobot drafts log queries, monitors, dashboards, and playbooks for you to approve, on models Sumo Logic hosts on Amazon Bedrock. Its MCP server reads alerts and searches logs, and on Flex those searches are charged as scans. Claude and GitHub Copilot each have their own monitoring app.
Tradeoff
Sumo Logic's MCP server can also update Cloud SIEM insights and create detection rules, for teams that run security in the same place.
One licence, every label, and control at ingest
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One licence covers distributed tracing, profiling, custom metrics, custom dashboards, alerting, RBAC, and forward deployed engineers. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill, at your negotiated rates.
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Drop, remap, redact, forward, and aggregate metrics, logs, and traces at ingest, from the UI or as code with the Terraform provider. Every rule is previewed against live data before you save it.
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Labels like customer_id or tenant stay on the metric, with no charge per label or metric name.
Sumo Logic
Credits, on Essentials or Enterprise Suite. On Flex, log ingest has no charge, and credits pay for storage and for the data each search scans, including the searches Mobot and MCP clients run. Ingest controls sit in a different place per signal, and metrics allow 50M or 100M unique series a week by retention, with a source over the limit disabled.
Your cloud account, and queries without a new language
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Last9 runs single-tenant in your own cloud account, on AWS or GCP in any region, and manages it for you, including the AI. Last9 sizes the cluster, tunes it, and runs the upgrades.
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PromQL and LogQL natively, with a builder and plain-English Ask Mode for anyone who does not write queries. Your own Grafana can query Last9 metrics as a Prometheus data source.
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Support is a shared channel in Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat, with forward deployed engineers who know your setup.
Sumo Logic
Sumo Logic runs only as a cloud service, in its own deployments, including FedRAMP Moderate and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Logs and traces use its pipe-based Search Query Language, and metrics use a separate query language.
Which fits you
Which one fits your team?
Choose Last9 if
- You want an agent to query metrics and traces as well as logs, and to add drop rules and edit dashboards
- You want the AI on your own model provider, with no charge per query or investigation
- You want one licence instead of credits spent on every search
- You want PromQL and LogQL, or plain English, instead of a proprietary search language
- You want it in your own cloud account, managed for you, with engineers in a shared channel who run the move
Choose Sumo Logic if
- You use Cloud SIEM or Cloud SOAR, or want security analytics in the same platform as your logs
- You need FedRAMP Moderate, or the AWS European Sovereign Cloud
- You ingest a lot of logs and search them rarely, which suits free ingest on Flex
- You want a free plan to try it on before you buy
Migration
Moving off Sumo Logic
What the switch involves, and what Last9 does for you.
Forward deployed engineers
A Last9 engineer runs the move with your team.
Talk to an engineerDual-ship through one collector
Sumo Logic accepts OTLP, so an OpenTelemetry Collector sends the same metrics, logs, and traces to both platforms. Compare them on your own incidents before you cut anything over.
See the integrationsQueries without the Search Query Language
A Last9 engineer moves your dashboards and alerts with your team, and rewrites Sumo Logic queries in PromQL or LogQL. Anyone who does not write queries uses the builder or plain-English Ask Mode.
Keep what is security
Teams that rely on Cloud SIEM or Cloud SOAR keep them and move only observability telemetry to Last9.
Objections
The objections we hear most
Each one is a fair reason to hesitate.
We use Sumo Logic for Cloud SIEM. Does Last9 replace that?
No. Last9 is an observability platform, not a SIEM. Run both: keep Cloud SIEM for security detection and response, and send observability telemetry to Last9. One OpenTelemetry Collector can feed both.
Sumo Logic does not charge to ingest logs on Flex.
Flex moves the cost to search: credits pay for the data each search scans, including the searches Mobot and MCP clients run. Last9 is one licence, with no per-query or per-investigation charge, and the infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill.
Sumo Logic's MCP server already writes dashboards and detection rules.
Its only search tool is for logs, so an agent cannot query metrics or traces through it, and it is not available in the Zurich or AWS European Sovereign Cloud deployments. Through the hosted Last9 MCP server, an agent queries metrics, logs, and traces, adds drop rules, and edits dashboards.
Our team knows Sumo Logic's query language.
A Last9 engineer moves your dashboards and alerts with your team, and rewrites Sumo Logic queries in PromQL or LogQL. Anyone who does not write queries uses the builder or plain-English Ask Mode.
Sumo Logic support answers us quickly.
So does Last9's. Support is a shared channel in Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat, and the forward deployed engineers in it know your setup and run the move with your team.
Is Last9 proven at our scale?
Last9 regularly handles 500M+ events a minute and 60M+ concurrent users, and has monitored 12 of the world's 20 largest streaming events. It is SOC 2 Type II certified and PCI ready, with SSO and access controls. Teams across fintech, healthcare, gaming, media, and commerce run it in production, including Replit, Pine Labs, Tata 1mg, and Housing.com.
67%
Average reduction in observability costs
2.5x
More telemetry retained without sampling
100+
Native integrations, OpenTelemetry-first
24x7
Support from forward deployed engineers
Customers
What do Last9 customers say?
With Last9, we just eliminated the toil. No more worrying about failing dashboards or alerts — we can finally use our metrics. It just works.
Last9 allowed us to offload the operational overhead of scaling so we could focus on business alerting rather than infrastructure management.
Frequently asked questions
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