The Dynatrace Platform Subscription (DPS) is more than a licensing model—it's a strategic enabler for modern observability.
DPS empowers organizations to consume any Dynatrace capability, at any volume, at any time, under a single, transparent commitment.
It’s designed to eliminate friction, simplify operations, and scale effortlessly with your business.
Certain features of DPS, especially those related to Account Management, require specific DPS permissions.
The following pages give you an overview of how to get started with DPS, from planning your commitment through to managing and reporting budgets and spends.
Account Management provides forecasting, alerting, drill-downs and real-time insights into your usage patterns. You can also manage Dynatrace license and subscriptions, Dynatrace users, SSO access, and monitor Dynatrace platform adoption and environment health.
Annual commitment
An annual commitment is the minimum amount of money a customer agrees to spend each year as part of their DPS contract. A Dynatrace Platform Subscription agreement is typically signed for 1–3 years, with a minimum annual commitment.
Billing usage events
The usage of Dynatrace capabilities are recorded as Billing Usage Events (BUEs) in Grail. Further usage details are stored there as BUE attributes. You can access those via Account Management, or by building your own dashboards that have DQL queries.
Capability
Dynatrace licensing costs are calculated based on an environment's consumption of Dynatrace capabilities. For example, the Application & Infrastructure Observability category includes four capabilities: Full-Stack Monitoring, Infrastructure Monitoring, Mainframe Monitoring, and Foundation & Discovery. You can find them on your rate card.
Consumption
The use of Dynatrace leads to consumption of capabilities, which we measure in different units of measurement.
Costs
All usage is collected and rated using the subscription’s rate card. As a result, usage is transferred into costs, expressed as a monetary value. Cost is the result of usage multiplied by the price point on your rate card of the respective Dynatrace capability.
Forecast
Your Dynatrace Platform Subscription provides a budget summary that forecasts costs through the end of the subscription period. The algorithms use seasonal forecasting techniques, looking at past usage and predicting future usage based on repeating usage patterns and costs.
Metered usage
Usage is metered each time that a Dynatrace capability is used. Usage counts the amount of units the customer consumes for a specific Dynatrace capability. Each capability has a different unit of measurement, for example, "memory-Gibibyte-hours" for Full-Stack Monitoring.
On-demand usage
On-demand usage occurs after the minimum annual commit is reached. Dynatrace never charges penalty-style overages. Instead, customers who consume more than their minimum annual spend commitment can continue to use the platform on an on-demand basis, billed monthly at the same rates as pre-paid consumption.
Rate card
The rate card is a structured pricing list that outlines the cost per capabilities under the DPS model. Your individual rate card is part of your purchase order and is accessible in the Account Management portal. Each platform capability has a price point defined in the rate card.
Subscription term
A Dynatrace Platform Subscription agreement is typically signed for 1–3 years, with a minimum annual commitment. Each platform capability has a price point defined in the rate card that's included with your agreement.
FAQ
How can I manage my consumption and control my costs?
You get complete transparency into your usage through a suite of tools in the Dynatrace Account Management.
In addition to raw data, the tools provide forecasting, alerting, and drill-downs that give real-time insights into your usage patterns.
I get access to all platform capabilities in a Dynatrace Platform Subscription contract?
Yes, the Dynatrace Platform Subscription gives you access to all platform capabilities when you sign the order form.
You can find them on your rate card.
When does Dynatrace charge for overages?
A: Dynatrace never charges penalty-style overages.
Instead, customers who consume more than their minimum annual spend commitment can continue to use the platform on an on-demand basis, billed monthly at the same rates as pre-paid consumption.
Customers can alternatively increase their commitment spend to attain a higher discount.
How is monitoring consumption calculated when capabilities are used for less than an hour?
When Dynatrace capabilities are used for a fraction of an hour, we round up to the nearest 15 minutes for billing purposes (for example, one minute of usage is billed as 15 minutes; an hour and three minutes of usage is billed as 1.25 hours).
This billing model is intended to be advantageous in cloud native environments where hosts and services are rapidly spun up and destroyed.
How can I manage who can access consumption information?
This is simple to manage via permissions.
Dynatrace permissions are structured across three levels, giving flexibility and transparency on access rights across the organization.