Grafana

Grafana

Freemium

The open and composable observability and data visualization platform.

Observability & Monitoring
Infrastructure & APM

Published 29 May 2026 · Last updated 27 September 2026

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Scores

Popularity4/5

The standard for open-source observability dashboards; widely deployed across industries.

Learning Curve3/5

Dashboard builder is intuitive, but data source configuration and alerting rules take practice.

Flexibility5/5

Plugin ecosystem covers any data source; custom dashboards, alerting, and the LGTM stack.

Performance4/5

Efficient panel rendering; alert evaluation is lightweight; scales with data source performance.

Portability4/5

Open source; JSON dashboard export and pluggable data sources make migration manageable.

About Grafana

Grafana is an open-source analytics and visualization platform from Grafana Labs, used for infrastructure monitoring, application observability, and business dashboards. Its panel-based dashboard system queries data where it already lives (Prometheus, InfluxDB, Loki, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and 150+ other sources) without moving it, and renders time-series graphs, heatmaps, stat panels, tables, geomaps, and histograms.

Beyond dashboards, Grafana handles alerting across every connected source, and dashboards can be managed as code through provisioning files, the HTTP API, or Git Sync. Grafana Labs also builds the rest of the LGTM stack (Loki for logs, Tempo for traces, Mimir for metrics), so Grafana can front a fully open-source observability backend.

Grafana is AGPLv3-licensed and self-hostable from packages or Docker images. Grafana Cloud runs the full stack as a managed service with a free tier and usage-based paid plans, and Grafana Enterprise adds RBAC, reporting, and audit logs for self-managed deployments. It is the de facto standard for infrastructure and application dashboards.

Key Features

  • 150+ built-in data source plugins (Prometheus, InfluxDB, Loki, PostgreSQL, CloudWatch, etc.)
  • Rich panel library: time-series, heatmap, geomap, stat, table, histogram, candlestick
  • Unified alerting with multi-channel notifications (Slack, PagerDuty, email, webhooks)
  • Dashboards as code via provisioning, the HTTP API, and Git Sync
  • Grafana Cloud LGTM stack: Loki (logs), Grafana, Tempo (traces), Mimir (metrics)
  • Transformations for in-dashboard data manipulation without querying
  • Template variables for dynamic, reusable dashboards
  • Embedded Grafana panels via iframe or native embedding API

Pros

  • Connects to virtually any data source — unmatched breadth of integrations
  • Mature time-series visualization for metrics and observability
  • Generous Grafana Cloud free tier (10k metrics, 50GB logs, 50GB traces)
  • AGPLv3 open-source — fully self-hostable
  • Dashboards can be versioned in Git and managed as code
  • Extensive plugin marketplace for data sources, panels, and apps

Cons

  • Not optimized for ad-hoc business analysis — more ops/engineering-focused
  • Dashboard configuration can be verbose; complex setups require JSON editing
  • AGPLv3 license has copyleft implications for SaaS embedding use cases
  • Enterprise features (RBAC, audit logs, reporting) require paid tiers
  • Self-hosting the full LGTM backend at scale is operationally heavy

Grafana Pricing

Freemium
Open SourceFree
  • · Self-hosted under AGPLv3 license
  • · All core panels and visualizations
  • · 150+ data source plugins
  • · Community support
Cloud FreeFree
  • · Grafana Cloud managed hosting
  • · 10,000 active series (metrics)
  • · 50 GB logs, 50 GB traces, 50 GB profiles
  • · 14-day retention
Cloud Pro$19/monthly
  • · $19/mo platform fee, including 10K metric series, 50 GB logs, and 3 active users
  • · Then usage-based: $8 per extra active user, $6.50 per 1K metric series
  • · 13 months of metrics retention, 30 days of logs
  • · 8x5 email support
EnterpriseContact sales
  • · Minimum $25,000/year
  • · Advanced RBAC and data source permissions
  • · Audit logs and compliance reporting
  • · SSO/SAML integration

Tech Stacks with Grafana

Advanced API (Go)

Project

A high-performance API stack for advanced engineers. Go handles concurrency, PostgreSQL + Redis back the data layer, Prometheus + Grafana provide observability, and Kubernetes can orchestrate containers as an optional addition.

Go
Go

Programming

PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
Redis
Redis

Databases

Google Cloud Platform
Google Cloud Platform

Hosting

Prometheus
Prometheus
Grafana
Grafana

Observability

Details Sandbox
Deploy on:
Authentication add-on:
CI/CD add-on:
Containerization add-on:
Email add-on:
Payments add-on:

Kubernetes DevOps Pipeline

Infrastructure

A self-managed DevOps platform for teams that want the whole path from commit to production in one place. Bring your own containerized app; GitHub Actions or GitLab CI/CD tests and builds it, Kubernetes deploys and runs it, PostgreSQL is available for its data, and Grafana and Sentry close the observability loop.

PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL

Databases

Hetzner
Hetzner

Hosting

GitHub Actions
GitHub Actions
Docker
Docker
Kubernetes
Kubernetes

DevOps

Grafana
Grafana
Sentry
Sentry

Observability

Details Sandbox
Deploy on:
CI/CD:

Airbyte + ClickHouse + Grafana

Project

Airbyte syncs data from any source into ClickHouse, a columnar OLAP database that handles billions of rows at millisecond query speed. Grafana connects to ClickHouse for real-time dashboards and alerting. Python handles any custom ingestion scripts.

Python
Python

Programming

ClickHouse
ClickHouse

Databases

Airbyte
Airbyte

Data

Grafana
Grafana

Observability

Details Sandbox
CI/CD add-on:
Containerization add-on:

Tools Related to Grafana

Works well with Grafana(3)

ClickHouse

ClickHouse

Column-oriented OLAP database for real-time analytics at massive scale. Processes billions of rows per second with SQL — self-hostable or available as a managed cloud service.

Freemium
Databases
4/5

Grafana queries ClickHouse via its official data source plugin for real-time analytical dashboards and time-series visualisation.

Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi

The most popular single-board computer for lightweight self-hosting: a Raspberry Pi 5 runs Pi-hole, Home Assistant, WireGuard, and small local models around the clock for a few dollars a month in electricity, with no monthly hosting bill.

Paid
Hosting & Cloud
3/5

Grafana publishes an official Raspberry Pi installation guide — the ARM build is a first-class target, not a community port.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes

Open-source container orchestration system from the CNCF that automates deployment, scaling, networking, and self-healing of containerized applications across a cluster of machines.

Open Source
DevOps & CI/CD
4/5

Grafana visualises Prometheus and other Kubernetes metrics — Grafana dashboards for cluster health (CPU, memory, pod status) are a standard part of any Kubernetes monitoring setup.

Alternatives to Grafana(2)

Datadog

Datadog

Cloud-native monitoring and analytics platform that provides unified visibility across infrastructure, applications, and logs.

Usage Based
Observability & Monitoring
4/5

Datadog is a full-stack SaaS observability platform (metrics, logs, traces); Grafana is open-source visualization typically paired with Prometheus — self-host vs SaaS trade-off.

Sentry

Sentry

Application monitoring platform that helps developers identify, diagnose, and fix errors and performance issues in real-time.

Freemium
Observability & Monitoring
3/5

Grafana visualizes metrics/logs from any source; Sentry specializes in error tracking — different observability focus areas, often used together.

Links

Website Docs GitHub

Vendor

Grafana Labs

Grafana Labs

Website →

Tags

Open SourceSelf-hostableFree TierData VisualizationMonitoringDashboards

Details

Maintained
Yes
Monitoring
Metrics, Logging, APM, Uptime
Hosting
Cloud & Self-hosted
Open source
Yes
Alerting
Yes
GitHub stars
76.9k
Stars updated
2026-09-23