Grafanavs
Prometheus
Prometheus: Open source monitoring and alerting toolkit for cloud native environments
Grafana
Observability and Data Visualization
As of 30 August 2026, Grafana has a free plan and paid plans start at $19/month. Grafana is a multi-platform open-source analytics and interactive visualization platform. Softwr lists it under Networking. Grafana is made by Grafana Labs, launched in 2014, available on Web, API.
Overview
What Grafana does
Grafana is a multi-platform open-source analytics and interactive visualization platform.
What people use it for
- Metrics visualization and monitoring
- Log aggregation and analysis
- Distributed traces management
- System performance profiling
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Grafana.
- The free tier retains metrics, logs and traces for 14 days only
- Free is capped at 10,000 active metric series and 50 GB each of logs and traces a month
- The Pro plan carries a $19 a month platform fee before any usage charges
- Logs and traces are billed on three separate meters, at $0.050 per GB processed, $0.400 per GB written and $0.100 per GB retained
- Retaining data is an ongoing charge rather than a one off, so historical data costs every month it exists
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Grafana
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- GrafanavsCloudflare
Cloudflare: The web performance and security company
- GrafanavsConsul
Consul: Service discovery, networking, and security
- GrafanavsIvanti
Ivanti: Security, service management, and unified endpoint management
Pricing
What Grafana costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- Limited usage across all services
- 14-day retention for metrics, logs, traces, profiles
- Community support only
- No credit card required
Pro
$19 /mo
- Pay-as-you-go pricing with volume discounts
- 13-month retention for metrics
- 30-day retention for logs/traces/profiles
- 8x5 email support
- Generous free allowances per service
Enterprise
$25,000 /yr
- Custom pricing based on annual volume
- Premium support included
- Custom retention options
- Flexible deployment options
Capabilities
Features
Dashboard creation
Alerting
Data source integration
Visualization plugins
API
Integration with API
Webhooks
Integration with Webhooks
REST
Integration with REST
Web support
Available on web
Api support
Available on api
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
What is Grafana's pricing model?
Grafana offers a freemium model with a free tier, Pro tier starting at 19 USD/month with pay-as-you-go usage charges, and Enterprise plans starting at 25000 USD/year.
SourceHow long is data retention for each plan?
Free tier provides 14-day retention for metrics, logs, traces, and profiles. Pro tier extends this to 13 months for metrics and 30 days for logs/traces/profiles. Enterprise offers custom retention options.
SourceWhat support is included in each tier?
Free tier includes community support only. Pro tier provides 8 times 5 email support. Enterprise includes premium 24/7 support.
SourceDoes Grafana offer volume discounts?
Yes, Grafana uses adaptive pricing with automatic volume discounts as usage scales, and provides cost-optimization tools to help eliminate spending on unused data.
SourceBehind it
Who makes Grafana
- Company
- Grafana Labs
- Based in
- United States
Keep looking
Where to go from Grafana
- Grafana alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Grafana pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Grafana badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Networking softwareThe full category
- Best Networking softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Networking software for
Compare Grafana with
- Prometheus
- Cloudflare
- Consul
- Tailscale
- Ivanti
- Ubiquiti UniFi
- Traefik
- Palo Alto Networks
- Splunk
- Kentik
- Juniper Mist
- PRTG Network Monitor
- OpenVPN
- Catchpoint
- Icinga
- MikroTik RouterOS
- Zabbix
- Ubiquiti UniFi
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6 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Grafana, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Grafana
Grafana alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Grafana pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Grafana
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Grafana badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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