Observability tooling expands by accretion. A team adopts an APM vendor, then adds a logging platform, then adopts a second logging tool for a specific workload, then builds an internal dashboard because nothing existing fit, then picks up a traces-specific vendor during an incident response. Two years later, the organization has six tools, each with its own pricing model, each partially covering the same ground, and no single view of any production incident. The question that eventually lands on the engineering leadership table is not “should we consolidate our observability stack?” It is “which of these do we keep, and what does it cost to unwind the others?” This post is about how to make that decision clearly, and the specific moves that make a consolidation succeed rather than stall. Why consolidation matters now Three forces make observability consolidation more valuable in 2026 than it was three years ago. Pricing has gotten sharper.…