The price anchor
| Logbin | Papertrail | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 — no subscription | $7/mo |
| Annual | $0 after purchase | $84 |
| 5-year total | $34 | $420 |
| 10-year total | $34 | $840 |
Subscription figures from the vendor's published pricing ($7/mo, ~$84/yr); the Logbin column is the full price, paid once.
Break-even analysis
A handful of months on a metered log plan already beats Logbin's one-time $34, and the first outage that would have bumped your tier pays it off outright.
- After 1 year: Logbin has cost you $34 total — Papertrail has cost $84.
- After 3 years: Logbin is still $34 — the subscription is at $252.
- After 5 years: Logbin is still $34 — the subscription is at $420.
What you get for $34 once
- Ingest anything. POST /ingest takes plaintext, JSON, arrays or NDJSON with levels auto-detected, plus a syslog UDP listener that auto-creates sources and two tiny file-shipper scripts.
- Live tail. An SSE stream with source and level filters, text matching, pause/resume and auto-scroll.
- Search and filter. Text search with match highlighting, per-source and per-level filters and saved views.
- Alert rules. Fire a webhook or email when a regex like /ERROR|FATAL/ matches N times in M seconds, with cooldowns so one incident is one alert.
- Per-source retention. Auto-purge old rows (default 14 days) to keep SQLite lean, with rotatable per-source API keys and color-coded sources.
- No renewal, ever. The license does not expire and there is no per-seat meter — $34 is the whole price.
Pricing questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes. Logbin is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/log-viewer-aggregator-mvp and always will be. The $34 buys the packaged 1-click installer; building from source is free.
Do my logs ever leave my infrastructure?
Never. Logbin stores everything in SQLite on your own server, so unlike hosted aggregators your logs stay on your box.
How much volume can it really handle?
Honestly, small-team volumes: SQLite comfortably handles millions of rows with retention doing its job. This is not an Elasticsearch cluster and does not pretend to be, and search is LIKE-based rather than a full-text index.
Is this a subscription in disguise?
No. $34 once, no renewal, no per-GB metering, no license server. Deploy it and it keeps aggregating regardless of how loud your logs get.
Logbin — $34, one time
Or get Logbin plus every other app in the suite: the OneTimeSuite bundle is currently $97, one time.