Azure Monitor vs Grafana comparison

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18,164 views|15,243 comparisons
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9,013 views|5,521 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jun 28, 2023

We performed a comparison between Azure Monitor and Grafana based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Azure Monitor's initial setup is cloud-native and can take several days with varying opinions on its ease. On the other hand, Grafana's setup can take anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of weeks with varying opinions on its complexity and ease of deployment.
  • Features: Azure Monitor is primarily focused on monitoring cloud resources and provides log analysis, graphs and charts, and reporting. On the other hand, Grafana is an open source tool that offers customizable and visually appealing graphs, catering to multiple use cases, and flexibility in integration with other tools.
  • Pricing: Azure Monitor's pricing is determined by log file size and is a pay-as-you-go option that is cost-effective compared to other options. On the other hand, Grafana's pricing is moderate and depends on the number of metrics ingested per day. While the free version of Grafana works well for visualization, a license is needed for commercial use.
  • Service and Support: Users have differing experiences with Azure Monitor's customer service, with some finding it helpful and efficient, while others have faced unhelpful support and long wait times. Similarly, Grafana's support has received mixed reviews, with some finding it efficient and helpful while others rely on community forums for assistance.
  • ROI: Azure Monitor's ROI is said to be dependent on the user experience, whereas companies using Grafana have reported a positive ROI due to enriched data visualization and easy monitoring.

Comparison Results: Users prefer Grafana over Azure Monitor as it offers highly customizable and visually appealing graphs, flexibility in integration with other tools, and is open-source. Although Grafana's customer service and support have mixed reviews, its ease of setup and moderate pricing make it a popular choice for data visualization and analytics.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Monitor vs. Grafana Report (Updated: September 2023).
735,432 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Log analytics and log queries are the most valuable features of Azure Monitor.""It is a robust, stable product.""Azure Monitor's best features are its graphs and charts, the different visibility options, and reporting.""The upside to the solution is if you are working in a Microsoft or Azure environment, it makes things easier.""Recently, they have improved their integration with other resources, so we get even more robust data.""The most valuable features of Azure Monitor are the login analytics workspace and we can write any kind of custom queries in order to receive the data that is inserted into the login analytics workspace, diagnostic settings, et cetera.""Technical support is helpful.""You can scale the product."

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"Grafana's built-in integration with third-party tools, databases, and MQs is an amazing feature.""Compatibility with Prometheus databases and the Spring Boot application make it the first choice when moving toward an SRE model.""Grafana is a very scalable product. It's a really good product.""Grafana's best features are live monitoring and alerts.""It has good stability.""It is a stable solution.""The integration between Loki and Tempo is valuable.""The most valuable feature of Grafana is the ease to build dashboards from observability construction. Additionally, the page services and integration are good."

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Cons
"In terms of pricing, Azure Monitor's billing based on data size can sometimes lead to increased costs, especially when developers need to purge data frequently. While there are mechanisms in place to track and manage this, there is room for improvement in terms of optimizing data pausing and related processes. Enhancements in this area could help mitigate potential billing concerns and provide a more seamless experience for users.""The default interface should be improved.""Azure Monitor is not user-friendly, and the interface is not exciting. Switching between the dashboards is not easy.""They should include advanced logging on the database level in the Azure pool.""Azure Monitor's integration with applications could be improved.""The solution's monitoring feature has limitations for analyzing multiple metrics.""The solution should have cross-connection or cross-communication between tech partners.""The monitoring of Kubernetes clusters needs improvement to be on par with competitors."

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"Setting up alerts via Grafana is a bit complicated, and alerting needs to improve.""It can take a considerable amount of time to learn the graphs if a long duration is selected.""The formatting could be better.""They should improve the functioning of its editing tool.""It's difficult to see the trends on the graph when the range is too long.""There are some areas of network drives that are not showing as expected based on server usage.""I would like the ability to download my results into any format in order to share the information with my clients.""Multiple dashboards combined into one dashboard has slowed things down for us."

More Grafana Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Azure Monitor is a low-priced solution, which is why it would work best on small-scale projects."
  • "The price of the solution is reasonable."
  • "Azure Monitor is a competitively priced solution."
  • "Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."
  • "The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less expensive."
  • "The licensing is a monthly fee."
  • "I would rate Azure Monitor a two out of five for affordability."
  • "The solution is very costly because you have to pay for various things such as adding to logs and internet alerts."
  • More Azure Monitor Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I use the open source model so it is free."
  • "My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."
  • "We use the open-source version of Grafana."
  • "We are using the open-source license."
  • "I give the price an eight out of ten."
  • "You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
  • "The solution is expensive."
  • "Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
  • More Grafana Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:I am monitoring all of my Azure Monitor and getting good reports. I can customize the reports to get the information I need. I am also getting emails about which AAS instances are down and everything… more »
    Top Answer:I 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… more »
    Top Answer:Hi @Faustine Chisasa,  I will go with ELK + Grafana. Elasticsearch is highly distributed, scalable and fast. You got power of storage. Logstash is highly pluggable and rich in plugins. You can use… more »
    Top Answer:The most valuable aspect is customization. There are many customizations possible, so I like that.
    Ranking
    Views
    18,164
    Comparisons
    15,243
    Reviews
    29
    Average Words per Review
    529
    Rating
    7.7
    Views
    9,013
    Comparisons
    5,521
    Reviews
    30
    Average Words per Review
    395
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Grafana Labs
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    Overview

    Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and health of various Azure resources, applications, and infrastructure. 

    With Azure Monitor, users can gain insights into the availability, performance, and usage of their applications and infrastructure. The key features of Azure Monitor include metrics, logs, alerts, and dashboards. Metrics allow users to collect and analyze performance data from various Azure resources, such as virtual machines, databases, and storage accounts. 

    Logs enable users to collect and analyze log data from different sources, including Azure resources, applications, and operating systems. Azure Monitor also provides a robust alerting mechanism that allows users to set up alerts based on specific conditions or thresholds. These alerts can be configured to notify users via email, SMS, or other notification channels. Additionally, Azure Monitor offers customizable dashboards that allow users to visualize and analyze their monitoring data in a personalized and intuitive manner.  

    Azure Monitor integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Automation and Azure Logic Apps, enabling users to automate actions based on monitoring data. It also supports integration with third-party monitoring tools and services, providing flexibility and extensibility. 

    Overall, Azure Monitor is a powerful and versatile monitoring solution that helps users gain deep insights into the performance and health of their Azure resources and applications. It offers a wide range of features and integrations, making it a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing Azure environments.

    Grafana is a powerful open-source analytics and visualization platform that allows users to monitor, analyze, and understand their data in real-time. 

    With its intuitive and user-friendly interface, Grafana enables users to create customizable dashboards, charts, and graphs to visualize data from various sources such as databases, cloud services, and IoT devices. It supports a wide range of data sources including Prometheus, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, and more. 

    Grafana also offers a vast library of plugins and extensions, allowing users to extend its functionality and integrate with other tools seamlessly. With its alerting and notification features, users can set up alerts based on predefined thresholds and receive notifications via various channels. 

    Grafana is highly scalable and can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, making it suitable for organizations of all sizes. Whether you are a developer, data analyst, or IT professional, Grafana provides a comprehensive solution for data visualization and monitoring.

    Offer
    Learn more about Azure Monitor
    Learn more about Grafana
    Sample Customers
    Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
    PayPal, eBay, Staples, Booking.com, Intel, NS1, TED, NetApp, Vimeo, RackSpace, SquareSpace, OpenTable, MediaMath, Fermilab
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company33%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Government10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Government8%
    Insurance Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Retailer23%
    Computer Software Company23%
    Comms Service Provider15%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Retailer6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise51%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise69%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise52%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise70%
    Buyer's Guide
    Azure Monitor vs. Grafana
    September 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: September 2023.
    735,432 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Azure Monitor is ranked 4th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 30 reviews while Grafana is ranked 7th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 33 reviews. Azure Monitor is rated 7.6, while Grafana is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Azure Monitor writes "Helps us test the performance and efficiency of cloud applications; good log analysis". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Grafana writes "Agent-free with great dashboards and an active community". Azure Monitor is most compared with Datadog, Splunk Enterprise Security, Dynatrace, Prometheus and Sentry, whereas Grafana is most compared with Dynatrace, New Relic, Sentry, Honeycomb.io and Splunk Enterprise Security. See our Azure Monitor vs. Grafana report.

    See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

    We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.