Grafana

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Observability and visualization platform

Monitoring Data Visualization Log Management Analytics

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4.5(243 across the web)

FreemiumVisit Website

Reviews onG2Capterra

243 reviews tracked

The Bottom Line

Entry price

Free plan available, paid tiers above

Biggest pro

Powerful dashboards

Biggest con

Complex setup

TL;DR - Grafana

Open-source visualization for metrics
Beautiful dashboards from any data source
Alerting notifies you before users complain

Pricing: Free plan available

Best for: Growing teams

4.5/5 across review platforms

What is Grafana?

Editorial review

Grafana Cloud is an end-to-end observability platform built on open source standards, offering metrics, logs, traces, and visualization with usage-based pricing and flexible deployment options.

Available on: Web

LCLouis CorneloupUpdated Jul 20, 2026 · how we evaluateSourcegrafana.com ↗

Pros & Cons

Pros

Powerful dashboards
Many data sources
Open source

Cons

Complex setup
Resource intensive

Ratings Across the Web

4.5(243 reviews)

Grafana holds an aggregate rating of 4.5 out of 5 from 243 reviews across G2 and Capterra, last checked August 23, 2026.

Ratings aggregated from independent review platforms. Learn more

Key Features

Metrics monitoringLog aggregationDistributed tracingProfilingKubernetes monitoringFrontend observabilityPerformance testing (k6)Custom dashboards

Pricing Plans

Free Trial

Pricing checked Aug 20, 2026

Free

Always free

All Grafana Cloud services
10K metrics series
50GB logs
14-day retention

Pro

$19/month base

Plus usage

8×5 support
13 months metrics
30 days logs/traces
99.5% SLA

Enterprise

$25,000/year minimum

Spend commitment

Premium support
Custom retention
BYOC options
Custom SLA

Calculate your cost View full pricing

Is Grafana worth the price?

90/100

Grafana OSS is completely free for self-hosted visualization.

Grafana Cloud Free gives 10K metrics series, 50GB logs, and 14-day retention at no cost. The Pro plan at $19/month base + usage charges is affordable for small teams but costs scale with data volume.

Enterprise starts at $25,000/year minimum.

Hidden Costs & Gotchas

Metrics overage at $6.50 per 1,000 active series adds up with high-cardinality data

Each active visualization user costs $8/month on Pro

AI features cost $20/user/month

14-day retention on Free; 30 days on Pro (logs/traces)

Enterprise requires $25,000/year minimum commitment

How Grafana Compares to Competitors

Far cheaper than Datadog at scale (Datadog custom metrics cost $5-$8 per 100 series). New Relic offers 100GB free ingest but per-seat pricing at $49-$169/user. Elastic is free self-hosted but Cloud starts at $95/month.

How Grafana's pricing compares

At $19/mo, Grafana is mid-range of its 4 direct competitors ($7 to $48/mo across the set).

Dynatrace

Papertrail

New Relic

$10

Grafana

$19

Datadog

$48

Entry paid plan, monthly. Pricing checked Aug 20, 2026.

Reviews

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4.5/5

Across 243 verified user reviews on G2, Capterra

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Best Grafana Alternatives

Top alternatives based on features, pricing, and user needs.

View full list →

DynatracePaid

Full-stack observability and AIOps platform

4.5

DatadogFreemium

Cloud monitoring, security, and AI investigations for DevOps

4.5

New RelicFreemium

Full-stack observability with 50+ monitoring capabilities

4.4

SplunkPaid

Data platform for security and observability

4.4

SentryFreemium

Application monitoring & error tracking

4.6

KibanaPaid

Visualize, explore, and manage your data stored in Elasticsearch with an open-source interface.

4.5

PapertrailFreemium

Real-time log aggregation and analysis for DevOps

4.6

PrometheusFree

Monitoring and alerting toolkit

4.4

See all monitoring tools →

Still deciding?

Most buyers shortlist 2 or 3 tools before committing. Pull a side-by-side comparison or browse the full alternatives shortlist below.

All Grafana alternatives8+ tools ranked, pricing + verdict per pick Grafana vs DynatraceHead-to-head: features, pricing, who wins Grafana vs DatadogHead-to-head: features, pricing, who wins Grafana vs New RelicHead-to-head: features, pricing, who wins

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Grafana FAQ

How does Grafana Cloud differentiate itself from Grafana OSS?

Grafana Cloud is a complete, fully managed observability platform that unifies metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, alerting, incident response, and advanced integrations. In contrast, Grafana OSS is a self-managed, open-source tool primarily focused on visualization and alerting, lacking the full suite of observability capabilities found in Grafana Cloud.

What specific features does Grafana Cloud offer to help reduce telemetry costs?

Grafana Cloud includes Adaptive Telemetry features that utilize machine learning to aggregate unused metrics and optimize log volumes. This functionality helps organizations save money by reducing the amount of telemetry data they store and process, while also encouraging a closer look at metrics for further optimization opportunities.

Can Grafana Cloud assist with incident response management?

Yes, Grafana Cloud provides an integrated Incident Response Management (IRM) solution. This solution offers workflows for creating alerts and SLOs, managing on-call schedules and incident response, and conducting postmortems, all within the context of the observability stack.

What security and compliance standards does Grafana Cloud adhere to for enterprise use?

Grafana Cloud is built for enterprise-grade security and compliance, offering single sign-on (SSO), role-based access control (RBAC), audit logging, and SOC 2 compliance. For government agencies and regulated industries, Grafana Federal Cloud is available with FedRAMP High authorization, meeting the highest U.S. federal security standards.

Does Grafana Cloud support data ingestion from OpenTelemetry?

Yes, Grafana Cloud fully supports OpenTelemetry. This allows for easy ingestion and analysis of telemetry data from modern applications and infrastructure, ensuring compatibility with contemporary observability standards.

What types of pre-built solutions are available for monitoring with Grafana?

Grafana offers over 100 pre-built solutions for monitoring various systems, ranging from Kubernetes to database monitoring. These solutions include out-of-the-box dashboards, metrics, and alerts for technologies like Linux, Windows, Docker, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Kafka, and Jenkins.

Source: grafana.com

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