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Grafana Reviews

Vendor: Grafana Labs
3.9 out of 5
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What is Grafana?

Grafana is an open-source visualization and analytics platform that stands out in the field of monitoring solutions. Grafana is widely recognized for its powerful, easy-to-set-up dashboards and visualizations. Grafana supports integration with a wide array of data sources and tools, including Prometheus, InfluxDB, MySQL, Splunk, and Elasticsearch, enhancing its versatility. Grafana has open-source and cloud options; the open-source version is a good choice for organizations with the resources to manage their infrastructure and want more control over their deployment. The cloud service is a good choice if you want a fully managed solution that is easy to start with and scale.

Get the Grafana Buyer's Guide and find out what your peers are saying about Grafana, Dynatrace, Zabbix and more!
Grafana is the #6 ranked solution in APM tools. PeerSpot users give Grafana an average rating of 7.8 out of 10. Grafana is most commonly compared to Dynatrace: Grafana vs Dynatrace. Grafana is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 65% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a financial services firm, accounting for 20% of all views.
Buyer's Guide
Grafana
September 2025
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Grafana mindshare

As of September 2025, the mindshare of Grafana in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category stands at 5.2%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana5.2%
Dynatrace8.8%
Datadog7.2%
Other78.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

PeerResearch reports based on Grafana reviews

TypeTitleDate
CategoryApplication Performance Monitoring (APM) and ObservabilitySep 15, 2025Download
ProductReviews, tips, and advice from real usersSep 15, 2025Download
ComparisonGrafana vs DatadogSep 15, 2025Download
ComparisonGrafana vs DynatraceSep 15, 2025Download
ComparisonGrafana vs Splunk AppDynamicsSep 15, 2025Download
Suggested products
TitleRatingMindshareRecommending
Dynatrace4.48.8%95%350 interviewsAdd to research
Zabbix4.23.3%95%107 interviewsAdd to research
 
 
Key learnings from peers

Valuable Features

Users find Grafana's key features to be graph visualization, dashboard customization, and integration capabilities. Its user-friendly interface and open-source nature save costs. The tool supports various data sources and offers effective alerting. Grafana's dashboards are praised for their configurability and ease of use. It excels in monitoring and alerting with strong community support. Integration with third-party tools and plugins enhances functionality. Grafana's ability to quickly identify issues is highly valued.
  • "The main benefits I have seen from using Grafana in my day-to-day activities is the visualization of the metrics, specifically Dora Metrics."
  • "Grafana saves us hours compared to DataDog."
  • "The features I appreciate most are the dashboards and the integrations with multiple data sources."

Room for Improvement

Grafana requires enhancements in security, data aggregation, reporting, machine learning, and query performance. Users find the system complex and documentation lacking compared to competitors. Improved user interface, integration, alerting, and configuration are necessary. The licensing model and mobile integration could be more flexible. Additional plugins, native query language, and predictive alerting would enhance functionality. Users also seek better AI capabilities and streamlined tutorials to simplify usage and setup.
  • "In assessing Grafana's scalability, we started noticing logs missing or metrics not syncing in time, which indicated a bottleneck that we had to address by updating the infrastructure."
  • "I would give it a ten if it were much simpler for users who just want to get a simple objective in Grafana and are not experienced with technical configuration."
  • "Regarding joining between queries, merging between two queries that give the same information could be simple, and there are some ways to do that, but if there was something even easier, it would be great."

ROI

Organizations experienced a 100% return on investment with Grafana. It enhanced data visualization and analytics, appealing to both technical and non-technical management. The tool allowed easy offsetting of monitoring and alerting policies. Companies utilized Grafana extensively, finding it cost-effective and beneficial for providing a clear, comprehensive view of applications and infrastructure. Some users mentioned they hadn't looked into the ROI specifically, yet appreciated Grafana’s benefits.

Pricing

Enterprise buyers evaluating Grafana often note its dual offering: a free open-source version and paid enterprise editions. The open-source version is popular, providing core functionalities at no cost. However, the enterprise edition's pricing depends on usage and specific features needed, such as additional plugins for databases like MongoDB. The enterprise option incurs variable costs based on infrastructure and metric ingestion volumes, with many users considering it moderately priced. Proper planning is essential due to potential resource intensity.
  • "For me, Grafana is a cheap tool because I don't have to spend much time learning the product since it is a simple solution."
  • "It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
  • "I am using an open-source version"

Popular Use Cases

Grafana is predominantly used for IT infrastructure monitoring and data analytics. Users leverage it to create visual dashboards for real-time and historical data analysis, integrating with tools like Zabbix and Prometheus. It assists in monitoring applications, payment transactions, server performance, and Kubernetes clusters. Organizations utilize Grafana for observability, integrating data from various sources to analyze CPU statistics, transaction metrics, and business application performance for enhanced insights and operational efficiency.

Service and Support

Grafana's customer service and support involve both professional and community avenues. Users find the community support responsive, with extensive resources available. Enterprise and pro users have dedicated support, while open-source users benefit from active forums and documentation. Some users prefer forum advice over direct contact. Grafana's support is generally considered knowledgeable and efficient, offering fast responses and beneficial collaboration. Community support is particularly valued for its promptness and expertise, making it a reliable resource.

Deployment

Grafana's initial setup is generally considered straightforward, especially for those with some technical expertise. While LDAP configuration can be complex, resource optimization may require professional experience. It may take time to master the GUI. Some users find deployment quick, taking only minutes or hours, especially with Kubernetes. For beginners, installation might seem challenging but easier once familiar with data source connections. Companies with Docker experience find setup efficient but foresee complexities with scaling.

Scalability

Grafana is highly scalable and supports diverse environments, although it may present challenges when using the open-source version, leading to cost concerns as it scales. Some organizations experience complexities in expanding, while others seamlessly add many users. High availability configurations and integration are possible, allowing many users across various departments. Scalability is generally well-regarded, with notable success in large-scale implementations, although performance varies based on infrastructure size and utilization.

Stability

Grafana is generally regarded as stable and reliable, with users praising its performance when resources are optimized. While many report no issues with bugs or crashes, some note stability concerns under specific conditions or when using advanced techniques. Ratings for stability vary, with scores often ranging from seven to nine out of ten. Users mention that management of resource allocation can impact stability, with high loads requiring architecture adjustments.
These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.
Download our Grafana Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Review data by company size

By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
By visitors reading reviews
Company SizeCount
Small Business417
Midsize Enterprise218
Large Enterprise1202
By visitors reading reviews

Top industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Retailer
5%
University
5%
Healthcare Company
4%
Media Company
4%
Insurance Company
4%
Government
3%
Educational Organization
3%
Energy/Utilities Company
2%
Real Estate/Law Firm
2%
Outsourcing Company
2%
Construction Company
2%
Hospitality Company
2%
Non Profit
2%
Performing Arts
1%
Legal Firm
1%
Recreational Facilities/Services Company
1%
Consumer Goods Company
1%
Wholesaler/Distributor
1%
Transportation Company
1%
Logistics Company
1%
Pharma/Biotech Company
1%

Compare Grafana with alternative products

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Learn more about Grafana

A key strength of Grafana lies in its ability to explore, visualize, query, and alert on the collected data through operational dashboards. These dashboards are highly customizable and visually appealing, making them a valuable asset for data analysis, performance tracking, trend spotting, and detecting irregularities.

Grafana provides both an open-source solution with an active community and Grafana Cloud, a fully managed and composable observability offering that packages together metrics, logs, and traces with Grafana. The open-source version is licensed under the Affero General Public License version 3.0 (AGPLv3), being free and unlimited. Grafana Cloud and Grafana Enterprise are available for more advanced needs, catering to a wider range of organizational requirements. Grafana offers options for self-managed backend systems or fully managed services via Grafana Cloud. Grafana Cloud extends observability with a wide range of solutions for infrastructure monitoring, IRM, load testing, Kubernetes monitoring, continuous profiling, frontend observability, and more.

The Grafana users we interviewed generally appreciate Grafana's ability to connect with various data sources, its straightforward usability, and its integration capabilities, especially in developer-oriented environments. The platform is noted for its practical alert configurations, ticketing backend integration, and as a powerful tool for developing dashboards. However, some users find a learning curve in the initial setup and mention the need for time investment to customize and leverage Grafana effectively. There are also calls for clearer documentation and simplification of notification alert templates.

In summary, Grafana is a comprehensive solution for data visualization and monitoring, widely used across industries for its versatility, ease of use, and extensive integration options. It suits organizations seeking a customizable and scalable platform for visualizing time-series data from diverse sources. However, users should be prepared for some complexity in setup and customization and may need to invest time in learning and tailoring the system to their specific needs.

Grafana customers

Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.

Related questions

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What would you choose for observability: Grafana observability platform or ELK stack?
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When evaluating Application Performance Management, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?
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What is your favorite tool for Application Performance Monitoring?
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How does synthetic monitoring differ from real user monitoring?

Product Categories

Product Categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

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Grafana Reviews Summary
Author infoRatingReview Summary
DevOps Team Lead at Kadabra4.5We use Grafana over DataDog for log processing on AWS due to its cost-effectiveness, ease of use, and open-source flexibility. Its documentation and AI tools enable quicker data analysis, though improvements in user simplicity are needed.
Director of Engineering at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees3.0We use Grafana for monitoring and alerting, focusing on observability with tools like Tempo for tracing. Though we're exploring its capabilities, improvements in AI and tracing would enhance its utility. We work with Grafana mainly in an on-prem environment.
Sr. DevOps at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees4.0I use Grafana for personal data visualization, particularly for Dora Metrics, which helps assess team performance objectively. While Grafana's open-source model appeals to management, Datadog's simpler dashboard creation and ease of use make it preferable for enterprises.
Senior Application Performance Monitoring and Alerting Specialist at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees4.0I've used Grafana for years due to its flexible integrations, powerful dashboards, and real-time visualization. It's stable, easy to set up, supports multi-tenancy, and I’d recommend it, though more integrations and better templates would help.
DevOps Engineer at Vimeo, LLC4.0I primarily use Grafana for monitoring Kubernetes with Prometheus. I appreciate its easy setup for data sources and integrations with multiple sources. Improvements could be made in simplifying query merging. We deploy Grafana on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Aplication Architect at Amazon4.5In using Grafana, I found it effective for displaying Prometheus data through a user-friendly interface, making monitoring and analysis straightforward. However, Grafana could improve by developing its own metrics system to reduce dependency on external tools.
BI and Analytics Engineer at Sandvine Inc3.5I use Grafana primarily for monitoring errors and CPU usage, benefiting from its plugins and alerting features. However, the interface needs improvement, offering limited customization and embedding options. Enhancing predictive alerting capabilities would be advantageous.
AWS Cloud Re-Start Program Specialist at Orange RDC (Congo)2.0I use Grafana for deploying OpenVideo and writing articles, but find its features too complicated and not intuitive. I prefer CloudWatch due to its ease of use and customizable metrics, which offer a more straightforward interface.