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Cloud · head to head

Grafana Cloud vs Restate

Grafana Cloud logo

Grafana Cloud

Cloud

Composable observability platform

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite
Restate logo

Restate

Developer Tools

Durable execution engine in Rust with a free tier and low-latency workflows

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • 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; Restate the runtime is under a Business Source Licence rather than an open source licence, so building a competing managed offering on it is prohibited and some procurement functions will reject it on licence grounds alone.
  • They diverge on capability: Grafana Cloud covers Grafana Dashboards, Restate covers Durable execution.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Grafana Cloud and Restate differ
AttributeGrafana CloudRestate
Pricing modelUnknownPer month by durable action count
PlatformsWeb (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari), APILinux, macOS, Web
CategoryCloudDeveloper Tools
Founded2014Unknown

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), 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 Restate

  • Durable execution
  • Virtual objects
  • Single binary runtime
  • Multi-language SDKs
  • Workflows and sagas
  • Restate Cloud

What people use each for

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

Grafana Cloud

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

Restate

  • Payment or order flows where a crash between two external API calls must not double-charge or lose the ordernot Grafana Cloud
  • AI agent loops that call tools over minutes or hours and must survive a deployment mid-runnot Grafana Cloud
  • Replacing hand-rolled retry, idempotency key and outbox code across a set of microservicesnot Grafana Cloud
  • A small team that wants durable workflows without operating a Temporal cluster and its databasenot 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

Restate

  • The runtime is under a Business Source Licence rather than an open source licence, so building a competing managed offering on it is prohibited and some procurement functions will reject it on licence grounds alone.
  • Restate Cloud jumps from a free fifty thousand actions straight to 300 US dollars a month for twenty million, so a workload sitting at a few hundred thousand actions pays enterprise-shaped money for hobby-shaped volume.
  • It is a young project against Temporal’s established base, so hiring engineers who already know it is unrealistic and the answer to most questions is in the docs rather than on Stack Overflow.
  • The programming model requires structuring code around durable handlers and virtual objects, which is a genuine rewrite for existing services rather than a library you add.
  • The single-binary simplicity that makes small deployments cheap also means fewer operational knobs at very large scale than a system designed as separable components.

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

Restate

Free
  • FreeFree
    • Fifty thousand durable actions per month
    • No credit card required
    • Community support
  • Starter$300/month
    • Twenty million actions per month
    • Two hundred actions per second, bursting to one thousand
    • Twenty GB storage
  • Pro$1000/month
    • Fifty million actions per month
    • Five hundred actions per second, bursting to two thousand
    • Fifty GB storage
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Negotiated volume
    • Twenty-four seven P0 support
    • 99.99 per cent SLA

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 Restate if

  • You need durable execution.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Web.
  • You also want virtual objects.
Restate review

Questions people ask

Is Grafana Cloud or Restate better?
Neither clearly leads. Grafana Cloud starts at Free and Restate at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Grafana Cloud or Restate?
Grafana Cloud starts at Free and Restate at Free.
Does Grafana Cloud or Restate run on more platforms?
Grafana Cloud runs on Web (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari), API. Restate runs on Linux, macOS, Web.
Can I use Grafana Cloud for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
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 Restate is typically brought in for.
What can Grafana Cloud do that Restate cannot?
Grafana Cloud covers Grafana Dashboards, Prometheus Metrics, Loki Logs, Tempo Traces. Restate covers Durable execution, Virtual objects, Single binary runtime, Multi-language SDKs.

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
Restate: Is Restate open source?

The SDKs are MIT. The runtime is under a Business Source Licence, which permits self-hosting but not offering it as a competing service.

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
Restate: How does it compare with Temporal?

Same problem, different shape: one Rust binary with embedded storage instead of a server plus database plus workers, and lower per-step latency.

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
Restate: Is there a free tier?

Yes, fifty thousand durable actions a month on Restate Cloud with no card required.

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
Restate: Which languages are supported?

TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Go, Python and Rust.

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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