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Elastic Observability 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

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Log Management (15th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
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 May 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 5.2%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 6.4%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
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

"It is a powerful tool that allows users to collect and transform logs as needed, enabling flexible visualization and analysis."
"The solution has been stable in our usage."
"The Elastic User Interface framework lets us do custom development when needed. You need to have some Javascript knowledge. We need that knowledge to develop new custom tests."
"The tool's most valuable feature is centralized logging. Elastic Common Search helps us to search for the logs across the organization."
"The product has connectors to many services."
"We use AppDynamics and Elastic. The reason why we're using Elastic APM is because of the license count. It's very favorable compared to AppDynamics. It's inexpensive; it's economical."
"The price is very less expensive compared to the other solutions."
"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."
"It has good stability."
"The most important feature of Grafana is its alarm formatting capability."
"Grafana provides a user-friendly interface for viewing infrastructure metrics through dashboards."
"It provides a graphical representation and it's clear to see what's happening."
"Compatibility with Prometheus databases and the Spring Boot application make it the first choice when moving toward an SRE model."
"The most valuable feature of Grafana is the ease to build dashboards from observability construction. Additionally, the page services and integration are good."
"Grafana's best features are live monitoring and alerts."
"Grafana is able to connect with multiple data sources, unlike Elasticsearch."
 

Cons

"The tool's scalability involves a more complex implementation process. It requires careful calculations to determine the number of nodes needed, the specifications of each node, and the configuration of hot, warm, and cold zones for data storage. Additionally, managing log retention policies adds further complexity. The solution's pricing also needs to be cheaper."
"The solution needs to use more AI. Once the product onboards AI, users would more effectively be able to track endpoints for specific messages."
"The price is the only issue in the solution. It can be made better and cheaper."
"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."
"More web features could be added to the product."
"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."
"The cost must be made more transparent."
"There is room for improvement regarding its APM capabilities."
"The solution has room for improvement with a better API to help automate the construction of the dashboards easier."
"All the features are complicated."
"The features are complicated and not intuitive."
"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."
"Trigger limits are difficult to see in a graph."
"Grafana doesn't provide anything for reporting."
"If there was an issue on one node, we couldn't drill down and see all the issues on other nodes."
"Writing queries can be a bit difficult because the syntax must be maintained."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"We have been using the open-source version."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"I am using an open-source version"
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are using the open-source license."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
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

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
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

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
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 Elastic Observability vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.