Grafana

grafana.com
Observability & Monitoring
Weekend Project

The open and composable observability platform

How to Replace Grafana

Overview

Grafana is an open-source observability platform that enables users to monitor, analyze, and act faster with AI-powered insights. It provides unified visualization, alerting, and incident response capabilities across metrics, logs, traces, and profiles from any data source. Built on open standards like OpenTelemetry and Prometheus, Grafana offers both cloud-managed and self-hosted options for organizations of all sizes.

Features

36 features across 21 categories

AI(4)

AI/ML InsightsAI

Identify anomalies and reduce toil with AI-powered analysis

Automated Anomaly CorrelationAI

Automatically correlate and identify related anomalies in your observability data

Contextual Root Cause AnalysisAI

Add an intelligence layer to telemetry data to automatically correlate related issues and uncover root causes quickly

Grafana AssistantAI

LLM agent built directly into Grafana Cloud for chat-based operations like fixing dashboards and making stack changes

Also in: monday.com, Notion, Airtable

Alerting(1)

Alerting

Trigger alerts from any data source with consolidated alert management and action capabilities

Also in: Splunk, Lacework, Dashlane

Application Monitoring(1)

Application Observability

Monitor application performance with integrated frontend and infrastructure telemetry using OpenTelemetry and Prometheus

Automation(1)

Configuration as Code

Manage dashboards, datasources, and configurations through declarative JSON or YAML files with version control

Also in: monday.com, Notion, Airtable

Cost Optimization(3)

Adaptive Logs

Identifies commonly ingested log patterns and provides customized recommendations for dropping unused telemetry to reduce log volume by up to 50%

Adaptive Metrics

Eliminates unused time series data through aggregation and cardinality optimization to reduce costs by up to 80%

Cost Management

Manage, control, and optimize observability spend with centralized suite of tools

Also in: OpenAI API, Neon, Melio

Data Collection(1)

Grafana Alloy

OpenTelemetry Collector distribution with Prometheus pipelines for flexible data collection

Also in: Insider CDP, Lytics, monday.com

Frontend Monitoring(2)

Frontend Observability

Gain real user monitoring insights and clear visibility into end user experience of web applications

Grafana Faro

Frontend application observability web SDK for real user monitoring insights

Incident Management(2)

Incident Response Management

Detect and respond to incidents faster with automated task management and simplified workflows

On-call Management

Reduce toil in on-call management through simpler, engineer-tailored workflows and interfaces

Infrastructure Monitoring(2)

Infrastructure Observability

Ensure infrastructure health and performance with pre-built solutions for Kubernetes, cloud, and on-premises environments

Kubernetes Monitoring

Get Kubernetes health, performance, and cost monitoring from cluster to container level

Instrumentation(1)

Grafana Beyla

eBPF auto-instrumentation for automatic telemetry collection without code changes

Integration(5)

Data Source Plugins

Hook into existing data sources via APIs and render data in real time without requiring data migration

OpenTelemetry Support

Native OTel ingestion without custom metrics or vendor lock-in for standardized telemetry collection

Plugins

Connect Grafana to data sources, apps, and more via extensible plugin architecture

Prometheus Exporters

Get metrics into Prometheus quickly with community-maintained exporters

Prometheus Integration

Native support for Prometheus metrics with PromQL querying and Kubernetes monitoring

Logging(1)

Grafana Loki

Multi-tenant log aggregation system for storing and querying logs without worrying about volume, costs, or storage limits

Metrics(1)

Grafana Mimir

Scalable and performant metrics backend for aggregating metrics across distributed systems globally

Monitoring(1)

SLO Management

Create, manage, and scale service level objectives with SLO dashboards and error budget alerts

Profiling(1)

Grafana Pyroscope

Scalable continuous profiling backend for optimizing infrastructure spend and enhancing application performance

Querying(1)

PromQL and Graphite Queries

Query high-cardinality data with blazing fast PromQL and Graphite queries

Security(1)

Security and Governance

Robust user authentication, authorization, data source permissions, audit logging, and compliance with industry standards

Templates(2)

Dashboard Templates

Try out and share prebuilt visualizations through community dashboard templates

Pre-built Solutions

100+ pre-built observability solutions for various monitoring scenarios and use cases

Testing(3)

Grafana k6

Load testing and performance testing tool for engineering teams with synthetic monitoring capabilities

Performance Testing

Easily run cloud-based performance tests to boost release confidence and velocity

Synthetic Monitoring

Proactively monitor the performance of APIs and web applications from the user's perspective across global locations

Tracing(1)

Grafana Tempo

High-scale distributed tracing backend for understanding request flow and tracking down issues quickly

Visualization(1)

Dashboard Creation and Visualization

Create, explore, and share beautiful dashboards to visualize and monitor almost any data source

Pricing

Free

Free
  • 10k series Prometheus metrics
  • 50GB logs, 50GB traces, 50GB profiles
  • 500VUh k6 testing
  • 20+ Enterprise data source plugins
  • 100+ pre-built solutions
  • 3 active AI users
  • 14 days retention for metrics, logs, traces, profiles, k6 tests
  • Community support
  • All Grafana Cloud services with limited usage

Pro

Popular
$19/mo + usage
  • Pay as you go above Free tier
  • 8x5 email support
  • 13 months retention for metrics
  • 30 days retention for logs, traces, profiles, k6 tests
  • Metrics: $6.50 per 1k series
  • Logs: $0.05 process, $0.40 write, $0.10 retain
  • Traces: $0.05 process, $0.40 write, $0.10 retain

Enterprise

From $25,000/year
  • Minimum commit of $25,000 per year
  • Custom retention
  • Premium support
  • Observability Architect
  • Deployment flexibility (Public Cloud, Federal Cloud, or Bring Your Own Cloud)
  • Volume discounts available
  • Scalable unit pricing based on annual commit
  • Full-service offering for security, compliance, and deployment requirements

Cost Calculator

Keep Paying Grafana

Monthly$19/mo
Yearly$228/yr
5-Year Total$1.1k

Build It Yourself

Est. Build Time~3 hrs
Hosting$20/mo
DifficultyVery Easy

Total Cost Comparison

1 Year
SaaS
$228
DIY
$240
3 Years
SaaS
$684
DIY
$720
5 Years
SaaS
$1.1k
DIY
$1.2k

DIY hosting estimate based on Vercel + Supabase free/pro tiers (~$20/mo). Build time estimated from 36 features at very easy complexity.

Build vs Buy

Should you build a Grafana alternative or buy the subscription? Estimate based on 36 features.

Buy Grafana

Better Value
Monthly cost$190/mo
3-year total$6,840
Time to deployDays

Build Your Own

Development cost$24,000
Maintenance$360/mo
3-year total$36,960
Dev time~2 months

Buying Grafana saves ~$30,120 over 3 years vs building.

Estimates based on 36 features and a BuildScore of 5/5. Actual costs vary.

Integrations

25 known integrations

AppDynamicsAWSDatadogDockerGitLabGoogle CloudGraphiteJenkinsJiraKafkaKubernetesLinuxMicrosoft AzureMongoDBMySQLNew RelicOpenTelemetryOraclePostgresPrometheusRabbitMQSalesforceSnowflakeSplunkWindows