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Grafana

In-depth entry

by Grafana Labs · Application · also known as Grafana OSS, Grafana Cloud

Dashboarding and alerting platform that visualizes metrics, logs and traces from Prometheus, SQL databases and dozens of other data sources

AGPL-3.0-only licenseOpen sourceFreemiumPaidEnterpriseSelf-hostedCloudSelf-hostable
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Link verified Nov 2, 2026

Overview

Grafana is an open-source visualization and alerting application from Grafana Labs, licensed under AGPL-3.0 since 2021. It connects to data where it already lives, through plugins for Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, InfluxDB, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, MySQL, ClickHouse, cloud monitoring APIs and many more, and renders dashboards composed of panels (time series, tables, heatmaps, logs, node graphs) driven by each source's native query language. Dashboards can be templated with variables, shared, versioned as JSON and provisioned from files.

Grafana Alerting evaluates rules against any data source and routes notifications to email, Slack, PagerDuty, webhooks and other contact points, with silences and grouping borrowed from Prometheus Alertmanager. The same binary includes Explore for ad hoc queries, correlations between metrics and logs, annotations and role-based access with teams and folders. Grafana Labs also develops the companion backends Loki (logs), Tempo (traces), Mimir (metrics) and Pyroscope (profiles), and sells Grafana Cloud, a hosted stack with a free tier, and Grafana Enterprise with additional plugins and support.

For a small infrastructure, Grafana with Prometheus is the common self-hosted pairing: exporters collect host and application metrics, Prometheus stores them, Grafana charts them and alerts. The self-hosted edition requires maintaining its SQLite or Postgres state, plugin updates and authentication, and large dashboards or long ranges put load on the data source rather than Grafana itself. Some data-source plugins and features are reserved for the Enterprise and Cloud offerings.

Capabilities

  • Dashboards with time-series, table, heatmap, log and graph panels
  • Data-source plugins for Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, SQL databases, Elasticsearch and cloud APIs
  • Unified alerting with notification policies, silences and many contact points
  • Templated variables, annotations and dashboard provisioning as JSON
  • Explore mode for ad hoc queries and metric-log correlation
  • Authentication via OAuth, LDAP, SAML (enterprise) and role-based access

Typical workflows

  1. Chart node and service metrics scraped by Prometheus
  2. Alert on error rates or disk usage with Slack or email notifications
  3. Build an operational dashboard over a PostgreSQL or ClickHouse database
  4. Provision dashboards from version-controlled JSON

Strengths

  • Very broad data-source support
  • Dashboards are portable JSON shared by a large community
  • Free self-hosted edition and a hosted free tier
  • Alerting and visualization in one application

Limitations

  • AGPL-3.0 license imposes obligations when modifying and serving the software
  • Some plugins and features are Enterprise or Cloud only
  • Query load falls on backing data sources; Grafana stores no metrics itself
  • Self-hosting requires managing state, upgrades and authentication

Prerequisites

  • At least one data source (Prometheus, a SQL database, etc.)
  • Docker, a package or a Grafana Cloud account

Who it is for

  • Site-reliability and operations teams
  • Developers monitoring their services
  • Analysts building operational dashboards over SQL data

Alternatives & comparison

Prometheus is the metrics store and query engine that Grafana most often visualizes; its built-in UI is minimal, so the two are complementary rather than competing. Uptime Kuma covers only availability checks and status pages with far less setup. Metabase and other BI tools target business data in SQL warehouses with question-style exploration, whereas Grafana is oriented to time series and operational alerting.

  • Apache Superset

    Apache-licensed BI web application with SQL Lab, a no-code chart builder, dashboards and connectors to any SQLAlchemy-compatible database

    Open sourceOpen source
  • Metabase

    Self-hostable BI tool with a no-code question builder, SQL editor, dashboards and embedding; AGPL open-source edition plus commercial Pro and Enterprise

    MixedOpen source
  • Prometheus

    Pull-based metrics monitoring system and time-series database with the PromQL query language, service discovery and the Alertmanager component

    Open sourceOpen source
  • Uptime Kuma

    Self-hosted uptime monitor with HTTP, TCP, DNS, ping and keyword checks, many notification channels and public status pages

    Open sourceOpen source
Compare Grafana with its alternatives →

Sources & verification

Primary sources consulted for this record. Claims are tied to the fields each source supports; the automated link checker re-verifies every URL on a schedule.

  • License
    Grafana LICENSE (AGPL-3.0)

    https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/main/LICENSE

    Supports: license_spdx, source_model

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Official documentation
    Grafana documentation

    https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest

    Supports: capabilities, workflows, integrations

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Official site
    Grafana Labs

    https://grafana.com/

    Supports: name, summary, vendor

    checked Nov 1, 2026
  • Pricing page
    Grafana Cloud pricing

    https://grafana.com/pricing

    Supports: pricing_model

    checked Nov 1, 2026
Confidence
High
Reviewed
Nov 1, 2026
Links
Verified · Nov 2, 2026

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