Building an observability stack often begins with logs due to their familiarity and ease of integration into existing workflows, but this approach can lead to scalability challenges and increased costs, especially in Grafana Cloud. While logs can quickly make an application observable, over-relying on them can result in operational and cost issues due to Grafana Cloud's fair use policies and the performance limitations of the Loki log aggregation system. To optimize observability, it is recommended to use metrics for efficient monitoring, employ recording rules to reduce query loads, and optimize log queries by filtering on indexed labels and narrowing time ranges. Logs remain essential for detailed investigations and compliance needs, but a balanced strategy that prioritizes metrics can enhance reliability and scalability. Grafana Cloud offers tools like the Loki query fair usage dashboard and built-in usage alerts to assist in managing these challenges and optimizing performance.