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Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) 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

Google Cloud's operations s...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
26th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (24th), Cloud Monitoring Software (16th)
Grafana
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 0.9%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 2.6%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Grafana2.6%
Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)0.9%
Other96.5%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Architect at T-Systems International GmbH
Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations
As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or Big Query can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings. It has default integration for all gcp services. recently managed Prometheus support gives more flexibility to organizations to remain connected with their current Prometheus setup. We leveraged integrated FinOps Hub for recommendations for our workloads and server configurations, helpd us lot in order to get maximum TCO.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Unified dashboards have empowered teams and have democratized real-time operational insights
Grafana's snapshot and dashboard sharing features are critical for our remote incident response. During production issues, I generate a public snapshot of a dashboard at a specific point and share the URL in our Slack war room so every engineer can see exactly what the metrics looked like when the error occurred. This helps significantly during the process of finding the root cause in those scenarios. The best features Grafana offers go beyond just pretty charts; it is an integration engine. The fact that I can join data from my SQL database with metrics from Prometheus in the same table is a feature I have not found performed as well elsewhere. My team uses this feature by comparing two different tables from the databases to show one single view, which Grafana is really helping with. In a visualized way, the charts can be displayed on one dashboard, allowing end users who are not familiar with these technical aspects to extract valuable data from it. Grafana has positively impacted our organization by democratizing data within our company. Before using Grafana, only developers could see the system health, but now our product managers and executives have their own high-level dashboards, which has improved cross-departmental transparency and alignment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Offers a valuable logging transport feature"
"We find the solution to be stable."
"I like the monitoring feature."
"Google's technical support is very good."
"The solution has improved our organization by reducing latency and also monitoring the costs of GCP usage by using the logging and monitoring features."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."
"It's easy to use."
"It has reduced the amount of time that we would take for troubleshooting."
"The initial setup is straightforward with just a few clicks on the solution's cloud."
"Grafana's best features are live monitoring and alerts."
"There are multiple kinds of models there to create dashboards, which is quite useful."
"It is easy to change and move virtual servers."
"The features I appreciate most are the dashboards and the integrations with multiple data sources."
"The solution's application server is easy to use and its overall architecture is better for development."
"With Grafana, we can identify in detail where issues come from and solve the problem."
"Grafana has positively impacted our organization by democratizing data within our company."
 

Cons

"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana."
"It could be more stable."
"It could be even more automated."
"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it. My request goes through various levels of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and comes back to my client machine. Suppose that my request has taken 10 seconds overall, so if I want to break it down, to see where the delay is happening within my architecture, I am not able to find that out using Stackdriver."
"Operations documentation could be a bit better. It took us some time to get up and running with it."
"Google Stackdriver is a stable product, but there is some lagging we cannot stop."
"The process of logging analytics can be improved"
"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."
"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."
"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."
"It can take a considerable amount of time to learn the graphs if a long duration is selected."
"In the area of documentation, they must do a better job."
"Writing queries can be a bit difficult because the syntax must be maintained."
"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."
"It would be helpful if they simplified the data source."
"The solution has some stability issues because I don't always see proper results."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."
"The cost could be lower."
"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"I am using an open-source version"
"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 use the open source model so it is free."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Stackdriver?
As Ops Suite, is a google product which effectively comes at zero setup cost, in order to manage your on-premises logs on onsite, it involves negligible cost for using ops agent and it also include...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is very reasonable and has excellent community support.
What needs improvement with Grafana?
Currently, I do not think that any improvement is required, but there are multiple use cases.
What is your primary use case for Grafana?
My main use case for Grafana is to create and design dashboards based on the metrics provided by different exporters via Prometheus. We have different exporters, and we are creating different dashb...
 

Also Known As

Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
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 Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.