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Azure Monitor vs Grafana comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Monitor
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (5th)
Grafana
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 7.5%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 6.4%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Monthly and weekly resource monitoring has improved efficiency
Azure Monitor can improve by adding some kind of storage for logs. I can get the runtime logs alone, yet if Azure Monitor can independently add one gigabyte, two gigabytes, or five gigabytes at least to log storage, I can fix the logs without syncing with Log Analytics Workspace and Sentinel. If they do that, and if they can integrate a little pricing adjustment, it will be profitable for the Microsoft tool.
Vikash-Agarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Displays data visually from multiple sources while integrating seamlessly with existing systems
Grafana provides a user-friendly interface for viewing infrastructure metrics through dashboards. It integrates with Prometheus to pull data and offers a straightforward setup process. Users can monitor metrics with greater ease, and the tool aids in quickly identifying issues by providing a visual representation of data. Grafana's integration capability is straightforward, which facilitates building dashboards as needed.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Azure Monitor is useful because of the useful application insights and telemetry, such as metrics and logs."
"Technical support is helpful."
"You can scale the product."
"Azure Monitor gives us the observability to check everything that we have in the cloud."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The features that are most valuable are the alerting function and also the logging functionality to analyze certain issues using log analytics"
"The feature that I found most valuable in Azure Monitor is its monitoring abilities. With Azure Monitor, you are able to monitor all of your cloud resources across multiple subscriptions in one dashboard and create solution-specific alerts that can trigger an email to the team responsible for that specific solution."
"It's a service from Microsoft, so it will scale."
"Provides good dashboard visualization."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the UI dashboard because we need to create a dashboard on Grafana to monitor our data."
"It excels in providing comprehensive details when there are downtimes or fluctuations, offering thorough reports."
"The solution has good features."
"Plugin: Connecting Grafana to multiple APIs of leading monitoring tools and alerting tools."
"The dashboards are very easy to work with."
"​Grafana has improved our analysis capability to solve an issue, increasing the co-working between IT services and business services.​"
"It is a stable, reliable product."
 

Cons

"I'd like the solution to do more around vulnerability assessment. It's lacking in the product right now."
"Setting up this solution is complex. It's also missing the functionality of assigning alerts."
"Azure Monitor's integration with applications could be improved."
"Azure Monitor could improve by adding capabilities for data observability and integrating more tightly with their data platform components."
"have used multiple products like Webex and PRTG. Some features could be added. Azure Monitor should add SMS and APIs. We have very limited access to Azure Monitor. I usually get alerts on my phone when they are integrated with Slack. I am not always available, but my team is. Sometimes, I am traveling and don't have access to my email, but I have Slack and other third-party projects that send me instant messages if a sensor goes down."
"If I contact the First Line Support, they seem disconnected and lack technical information."
"The solution needs better monitoring. It requires better log controls."
"The solution should have cross-connection or cross-communication between tech partners."
"The main drawback is the necessity for endpoint monitoring."
"Lacks in-depth graphs and sufficient AI."
"I find issues with Grafana. For example, I am unable to open some services there. Then, we have to open ten different tabs to get it fixed. And it's annoying when there's something going on; we want to check Grafana, and it throws four different errors."
"The solution should include online support."
"I have a problem with Grafana in the area of documentation."
"The look and feel of the charting and graph capabilities in Grafana could improve. If they provided a storyboard type of feature as they have in other solutions, such as PowerBI. The multi-tenanted and stitch metrics features could improve."
"There is a need for improvement in automating daily monitoring reports, especially when alerts are triggered due to system downtimes or fluctuations."
"Grafana could improve by having its own query language. Currently, it uses languages like Prometheus or InfluxDB, which not everyone knows. Their query language should be easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Azure Monitor's price is minimal to the point of being almost negligible."
"The tool is expensive."
"Customers of Azure Monitor must pay an amount that depends largely on how many services they need to integrate and the storage space required in terms of logs, etc. If they only have a few small services to monitor, the price won't be too high, but on the opposite side of the spectrum, it can certainly get pricey."
"The tool's pricing is very good. I could say that Microsoft offers different cost models, which are listed on the product's website."
"My company is okay with the current pricing of the solution."
"Besides standard licensing fees the customer needs to additionally pay based on the ingested data size"
"Azure Monitor is a low-priced solution, which is why it would work best on small-scale projects."
"It is a pay-as-you-go model. I find it very cost-effective."
"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."
"I am using an open-source version"
"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
"We are using the open-source license."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"The solution is expensive."
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842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
What do you like most about Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.
What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor can improve by adding some kind of storage for logs. I can get the runtime logs alone, yet if Azure Monitor can independently add one gigabyte, two gigabytes, or five gigabytes at lea...
What do you like most about Grafana?
The product's initial setup phase was very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?
I used the open-source version for my learning, which was free. In an enterprise setting, pricing is reasonable, as many customers use it.
What needs improvement with Grafana?
The interface is not well-liked by my customers. Grafana cannot be easily embedded into certain applications and offers limited customization options for graphs. I think predictive capabilities in ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.