Softwr
Grafana Loki logo

Grafana Loki

Log Aggregation for Grafana Stack

As of 30 August 2026, Grafana Loki is free to use. Grafana Loki is a log aggregation system designed to work seamlessly with Grafana. Softwr lists it under Logging. Grafana Loki is made by Grafana Labs, launched in 2014, available on Self-hosted, Web.

Overview

What Grafana Loki does

Grafana Loki is a log aggregation system designed to work seamlessly with Grafana.

What people use it for

  • Cost-sensitive organisations deploying Kubernetes and Prometheus ecosystems
  • Teams needing index-free log aggregation for high-volume environments

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 Loki.

  • Grafana Cloud Logs Pro plan includes only 30-day retention; retention beyond 30 days requires Enterprise plan with minimum $25,000 annual commitment
  • Open-source version requires self-hosting all infrastructure including storage and scaling

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Grafana Loki

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.

Capabilities

Features

  • Log aggregation

  • Label-based indexing

  • LogQL language

  • Cost-effective

  • 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.

Is there a free tier for Grafana Cloud?

Yes, Grafana Cloud has a Free Forever plan at no cost with no registration required. The free tier is suitable for personal projects and early-stage startups.

Source
How long is data retained in Grafana's free plan?

The free tier retains metrics, logs, traces, and profiles for 14 days.

Source
What is the minimum cost for Grafana Enterprise?

Grafana Enterprise has a minimum annual commitment of 25,000 dollars.

Source
Do I need a credit card to use Grafana's free tier?

No, Grafana Cloud's Free Forever plan requires no credit card to get started.

Source
How is Grafana Cloud billed?

Grafana Cloud Pro starts at 19 dollars per month with usage-based charges on top. Billing is monthly based on your consumption. Grafana offers automatic volume discounts based on your spending.

Source

Behind it

Who makes Grafana Loki

Company
Grafana Labs
Based in
United States
Share

Keep looking

Where to go from Grafana Loki

Best Logging software for

Compare Grafana Loki with

Other Logging software

  • Search, Observability, and Security Solutions

    10 researched notes
  • Observability made simple

    Free, then $49/mo15 researched notes
  • Log Management and Analytics

    From $0.1/GB ingested per month10 researched notes
  • Continuous Log Insights and Visibility

    Free, then $0.42/GB (logs ingestion)10 researched notes
  • Serverless Log Analytics and Observability

    Free, then $25/mo15 researched notes
  • AI-Powered Log Analytics and Monitoring Platform

    From $99/mo11 researched notes
  • Purpose-built time series database for metrics and events

    Free, then $0.0025/MB ingested12 researched notes
  • AI-native observability and incident response platform.

    Free, then $25/mo12 researched notes
  • Log Aggregation and Analysis Platform

    Free plan12 researched notes
  • Cloud-Hosted Log Management

    Free plan7 researched notes
  • Real User Monitoring and Crash Reporting

    From $40/mo12 researched notes
  • Application Performance Monitoring and Logs

    Free plan14 researched notes
  • Real-Time Error Tracking and Debugging

    Free plan12 researched notes
  • Full Stack Observability Platform

    Free plan11 researched notes
  • Application Performance Monitoring from Elastic

    Free plan10 researched notes
  • Open Source Search and Log Analytics

    Free plan13 researched notes
  • Lightweight Shipper for Logs

    Free plan8 researched notes

Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Grafana Loki, 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 Loki

Best Logging software alternatives

Software reliability platform with on-call management and agentic root cause analysis

subscription

Simple and effective cron job monitoring

Per-job monitoring with fixed tiers

Status pages with uptime monitoring and compliance-ready incident tracking

LLM reliability platform with open-source observability and evaluation

Freemium with pay-as-you-go enterprise option

Monitoring for cron jobs, websites, and background tasks

Pay-per-monitor plus user seats

AI-native incident management with automation, on-call, and root cause analysis

subscription

All-in-one incident management for alerting, on-call, and response

subscription

Active reliability platform combining uptime monitoring, API testing, and incident response

subscription

Compare Grafana Loki with alternatives