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Cloud · head to head

Grafana Cloud vs PagerDuty

Grafana Cloud logo

Grafana Cloud

Cloud

Composable observability platform

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
PagerDuty logo

PagerDuty

Technology

Real-time operations for real-time business

From
$21/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Grafana Cloud has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Grafana Cloud active Series (AS) billing model is difficult to predict and control; misconfiguration can cause sudden spikes and unexpected bills; PagerDuty aIOps, status pages, and live call routing are expensive add-ons not included in base plans, significantly increasing total cost
  • They diverge on capability: Grafana Cloud covers Grafana Dashboards, PagerDuty covers Incident response.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Grafana Cloud and PagerDuty actually diverge.

Attributes where Grafana Cloud and PagerDuty differ
AttributeGrafana CloudPagerDuty
Starting priceFree$21/month
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWeb (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari), APIWeb, Ios, Android, Api
CategoryCloudTechnology
Founded20142009

Identical on both: pricing model (Unknown), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Grafana Cloud

  • Grafana Dashboards
  • Prometheus Metrics
  • Loki Logs
  • Tempo Traces
  • Alerting
  • OnCall
  • Synthetic Monitoring
  • Incident Management

Only in PagerDuty

  • Incident response
  • On-call management
  • Alert grouping
  • Escalation policies
  • Mobile incident management
  • Postmortems
  • Status pages
  • Event intelligence

Both cover

  • Datadog
  • SOC2
  • HIPAA

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Grafana Cloud

  • Infrastructure monitoringnot PagerDuty
  • Application monitoringnot PagerDuty
  • Log aggregationnot PagerDuty
  • Distributed tracingnot PagerDuty

PagerDuty

  • Incident managementnot Grafana Cloud
  • On-call schedulingnot Grafana Cloud
  • Real-time alertingnot Grafana Cloud
  • Service reliabilitynot Grafana Cloud
  • Digital operationsnot Grafana Cloud

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Grafana Cloud

  • Active Series (AS) billing model is difficult to predict and control; misconfiguration can cause sudden spikes and unexpected bills
  • Reduced control and customization compared to self-hosted Grafana instances
  • Data sovereignty concerns for organizations requiring on-premises data retention
  • Limited reporting types compared to traditional BI tools for compliance and audit requirements

PagerDuty

  • AIOps, status pages, and live call routing are expensive add-ons not included in base plans, significantly increasing total cost
  • Complex escalation policies require workarounds for scheduling patterns beyond basic weekly rotations
  • 5-user minimum requirement forces costs even for small teams, with forced Business tier upgrades adding $12,000+ annually for larger teams

Pricing, plan by plan

Grafana Cloud

Free
  • FreeFree
    • 10k active series (metrics)
    • 50GB logs/traces per month
    • 3 active users
  • Pro$19/month
    • Usage-based pricing beyond free tier
    • 8 USD per active visualization user
    • Included Grafana Alerting
  • Enterprise$25000/year
    • Minimum annual commitment
    • Full-service deployment options
    • Premium support

PagerDuty

$21/month

No published plan breakdown. See the PagerDuty review.

Which should you pick?

Choose Grafana Cloud if

  • You need grafana dashboards.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari), API.
  • You also want prometheus metrics.
Grafana Cloud review

Choose PagerDuty if

  • You need incident response.
  • You work on Web, Ios, Android, Api.
  • You also want on-call management.
PagerDuty review

Questions people ask

Is Grafana Cloud or PagerDuty better?
Neither clearly leads. Grafana Cloud starts at Free and PagerDuty at $21/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Grafana Cloud or PagerDuty?
Grafana Cloud has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Grafana Cloud and $21/month for PagerDuty.
Does Grafana Cloud or PagerDuty run on more platforms?
Grafana Cloud runs on Web (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari), API. PagerDuty runs on Web, Ios, Android, Api.
Can I use Grafana Cloud for free?
Yes. Grafana Cloud has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. PagerDuty starts at $21/month.
What is Grafana Cloud best used for?
Grafana Cloud is most often used for infrastructure monitoring, application monitoring, log aggregation, distributed tracing. Of those, infrastructure monitoring and application monitoring are not what PagerDuty is typically brought in for.
What can Grafana Cloud do that PagerDuty cannot?
Grafana Cloud covers Grafana Dashboards, Prometheus Metrics, Loki Logs, Tempo Traces. PagerDuty covers Incident response, On-call management, Alert grouping, Escalation policies. Both handle Datadog, SOC2, HIPAA.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Grafana Cloud: What are the exact limits of Grafana Cloud's free tier?

Grafana Cloud free tier includes 10,000 active series for metrics, 50GB logs and traces per month, 3 active visualization users, and 14-day retention with community support. No credit card required.

Source
PagerDuty: What is the minimum cost to use PagerDuty?

PagerDuty requires a minimum of 5 users per account. The Professional plan starts at $21 per user per month ($105/month minimum), with annual billing providing 16% discount.

Source
Grafana Cloud: How is Grafana Cloud billed, and what are the per-unit costs?

Grafana Cloud Pro tier starts at $19/month platform fee plus usage-based charges. Metrics cost $6.50 per 1,000 active series above free limits, logs and traces are charged per GB ingested, and visualization users are $8 per active user.

Source
PagerDuty: What integrations does PagerDuty support?

PagerDuty integrates with 750+ monitoring, ticketing, and collaboration tools including Datadog, Slack, Jira, ServiceNow, New Relic, and Nagios.

Source
Grafana Cloud: Can I use Grafana Cloud for open-source Grafana deployments?

Grafana Cloud is the managed cloud service version. Open-source Grafana is free and can be self-hosted indefinitely on your own infrastructure.

Source
PagerDuty: How much does AIOps cost in PagerDuty?

AIOps Intelligence is sold separately as an add-on starting at $699 per month, and is not included in any of the base plans.

Source
Grafana Cloud: What observability signals does Grafana Cloud include?

Grafana Cloud includes metrics (via Mimir), logs (via Loki), traces (via Tempo), profiles, and synthetics, with unified querying and visualization across all signals.

Source
Grafana Cloud: Does Grafana Cloud include alerting and how is it priced?

Yes, Grafana Alerting is included at no additional charge across all tiers. Rule storage, evaluation, and notification delivery are covered by the platform fee with no per-alert or per-notification fees.

Source
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