Better Stack (Log Management)
Cloud-based log management solution for aggregating, searching, and analyzing application logs at scale
Grafana
Open-source platform for monitoring, visualization, and observability
Query, visualize, and alert on metrics and logs from any data source. Build dynamic dashboards, explore data through ad-hoc queries, and foster data-driven collaboration across teams.
Overview
The Composable Observability Platform
Grafana is a powerful open-source platform designed for monitoring and observability across distributed systems. It enables teams to query, visualize, alert on, and understand metrics and logs regardless of where data is stored, supporting data sources like Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, Postgres, and many more.
Unified Data Exploration
Built for DevOps engineers, SREs, and data analysts, Grafana offers fast, flexible client-side visualizations through a rich plugin ecosystem. Create dynamic, reusable dashboards with template variables, explore data through ad-hoc queries with split-view comparisons, and seamlessly transition from metrics to logs while preserving label filters. Mix multiple data sources in a single graph to correlate insights across your infrastructure.
Alerting and Collaboration
Define visual alert rules for critical metrics with continuous evaluation and notifications to Slack, PagerDuty, VictorOps, and OpsGenie. Share dashboards across teams to build a unified, data-driven culture. Licensed under AGPL-3.0, Grafana is built primarily in TypeScript and Go, backed by a vibrant community with 70,000+ GitHub stars.
Highlights
Mix multiple data sources in a single dashboard with per-query source specification
Dynamic dashboards with reusable template variables and dropdown filters
Seamless metrics-to-logs exploration with preserved label filters and live streaming
Visual alert rule definition with multi-channel notifications (Slack, PagerDuty, OpsGenie)
Pros
- Extensive data source support including Prometheus, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, and Postgres
- Rich plugin ecosystem for custom visualizations and panel types
- Active community with 70,000+ stars and comprehensive documentation
- Flexible deployment options with self-hosted and cloud variants
Considerations
- AGPL-3.0 license may require legal review for commercial embedding
- Steeper learning curve for advanced features like templating and alerting
- Performance tuning needed for large-scale deployments with many dashboards
- Plugin quality varies; third-party integrations may lack official support
Managed products teams compare with
When teams consider Grafana, these hosted platforms usually appear on the same shortlist.
Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.
Fit guide
Great for
- DevOps teams needing unified observability across heterogeneous infrastructure
- Organizations requiring customizable dashboards for business intelligence and analytics
- SREs building alerting workflows integrated with incident management platforms
- Data analysts exploring time-series metrics and logs from multiple sources
Not ideal when
- Teams seeking a fully managed, zero-configuration monitoring solution
- Projects requiring proprietary licensing without AGPL compliance
- Small-scale applications where simpler, embedded charting libraries suffice
- Use cases demanding real-time streaming analytics beyond visualization
How teams use it
Multi-Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring
Correlate metrics from AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and on-premise Prometheus in unified dashboards for holistic infrastructure visibility.
Application Performance Management
Track application latency, error rates, and throughput across microservices, drilling from metrics into logs for rapid root-cause analysis.
Business Analytics Dashboards
Visualize KPIs from Postgres, MySQL, and third-party APIs in real-time dashboards shared across product and executive teams.
Incident Response Workflows
Define threshold-based alerts on critical metrics, automatically notifying on-call engineers via PagerDuty and Slack for faster incident resolution.
Tech snapshot
TypeScript53%
Go44%
CUE1%
Rich Text Format1%
HTML1%
JavaScript1%
Frequently asked questions
What data sources does Grafana support?
Grafana supports Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, Postgres, MySQL, and dozens of other sources through built-in and community plugins. You can mix multiple sources in a single dashboard.
Can I self-host Grafana?
Yes, Grafana is open-source under AGPL-3.0 and can be self-hosted on-premise or in your cloud environment. Installation guides are available in the official documentation.
How does Grafana handle alerting?
Grafana allows you to visually define alert rules based on metric thresholds. It continuously evaluates these rules and sends notifications to Slack, PagerDuty, VictorOps, OpsGenie, and other channels.
What is the difference between Grafana and Grafana Cloud?
Grafana is the open-source platform you self-host. Grafana Cloud is a fully managed service offering hosted Grafana, Prometheus, and Loki with additional enterprise features and support.
Is Grafana suitable for non-technical users?
Grafana offers intuitive dashboards for viewing data, but creating complex visualizations, alerts, and queries typically requires technical knowledge of your data sources and query languages.
Project at a glance
Active- Stars
- 71,767
- Watchers
- 71,767
- Forks
- 13,375
LicenseAGPL-3.0
Repo age12 years old
Last commit2 days ago
Self-hostingSupported
Primary languageTypeScript
Last synced 2 days ago