Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs Grafana comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jun 29, 2023

We performed a comparison between Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) 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: Google Cloud's operations suite has a simple setup process with clear documentation and standard API features, while Grafana's setup process can be more challenging and time-consuming depending on the user's experience and requirements.
  • Features: Google Cloud's operations suite has impressive scalability and stability, and is praised for its monitoring, logging, and tracing capabilities. The cloud logging feature is particularly noteworthy. On the other hand, Grafana is known for its flexibility, customizable graphs, and strong support.
  • Pricing: Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) has a set upfront fee, while Grafana's cost fluctuates based on the number of metrics consumed each day. Grafana may be resource-intensive, and specific plugins may necessitate the acquisition of the enterprise version. Additionally, purchasing a license is required for commercial usage of Grafana, and the pricing is determined by the infrastructure.
  • Service and Support: Google Cloud's operations suite is praised for its technical support, while some users depend on their own DevOps team. On the other hand, Grafana's customer service has a mix of positive and negative reviews, with some users finding their technical support helpful and efficient, while others turn to community forums for help.
  • ROI: Google Cloud's operations suite is deemed as having good ROI, whereas Grafana is praised for its enriched data visualization and analytics, ease of use for monitoring and alerting, and providing a clear view of applications and infrastructure.

Comparison Results: Users prefer Google Cloud's operations suite over Grafana due to its cloud logging, user-friendly interface, and ease of setup. While Grafana is customizable and flexible, it lacks in data aggregation, reporting, and machine learning capabilities. Additionally, support for Grafana varies, while Google Cloud's operations suite has highly regarded technical support. Companies have seen a positive return on investment with Google Cloud's operations suite.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Grafana Report (Updated: November 2023).
746,723 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
"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use.""We find the solution to be stable.""Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well.""It's easy to use.""I like the monitoring feature."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Pros →

"The most valuable thing was that it had a good visualization tool.""It is a stable solution.""Great capacity planning and the solution has a great GUI.""The comparison feature is very good.""It has good stability.""Provides good dashboard visualization.""The most valuable feature of Grafana is the ease to build dashboards from observability construction. Additionally, the page services and integration are good.""It is easy to change and move virtual servers."

More Grafana Pros →

Cons
"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana.""The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient.""The logging functionality could be better.""It could be more stable.""It could be even more automated."

More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) Cons →

"The service dashboard is very hard and needs improvement.""Multiple dashboards combined into one dashboard has slowed things down for us.""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 are not a lot of plugins for financial market monitoring.""Grafana doesn't provide anything for reporting.""Grafana need to improve the logging functionality.""I would like the ability to download my results into any format in order to share the information with my clients.""The solution should include online support."

More Grafana Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
  • More Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) 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 →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
    746,723 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It could be even more automated. For instance, the moment you deploy something, the monitoring can be there for everything. You will just have to launch or click the console in the morning, and then… more »
    Top Answer:It excels in providing comprehensive details when there are downtimes or fluctuations, offering thorough reports.
    Top Answer:It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool.
    Top Answer:There is a need for improvement in automating daily monitoring reports, especially when alerts are triggered due to system downtimes or fluctuations. This enhancement would make the monitoring tool… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    4,193
    Comparisons
    3,765
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    274
    Rating
    7.8
    Views
    10,753
    Comparisons
    7,018
    Reviews
    33
    Average Words per Review
    376
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
    Learn More
    Grafana Labs
    Video Not Available
    Overview

    Real-time log management and analysis

    Cloud Logging is a fully managed service that performs at scale and can ingest application and platform log data, as well as custom log data from GKE environments, VMs, and other services inside and outside of Google Cloud. Get advanced performance, troubleshooting, security, and business insights with Log Analytics, integrating the power of BigQuery into Cloud Logging.

    Built-in metrics observability at scale

    Cloud Monitoring provides visibility into the performance, uptime, and overall health of cloud-powered applications. Collect metrics, events, and metadata from Google Cloud services, hosted uptime probes, application instrumentation, and a variety of common application components. Visualize this data on charts and dashboards and create alerts so you are notified when metrics are outside of expected ranges.

    Stand-alone managed service for running and scaling Prometheus

    Managed Service for Prometheus is a fully managed Prometheus-compatible monitoring solution, built on top of the same globally scalable data store as Cloud Monitoring. Keep your existing visualization, analysis, and alerting services, as this data can be queried with PromQL or Cloud Monitoring.

    Monitor and improve your application's performance

    Application Performance Management (APM) combines the monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities of Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring with Cloud Trace and Cloud Profiler to help you reduce latency and cost so you can run more efficient applications.

    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.

    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.

    Offer
    Learn more about Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)
    Learn more about Grafana
    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.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider29%
    Financial Services Firm29%
    Energy/Utilities Company14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    REVIEWERS
    Retailer21%
    Computer Software Company21%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Retailer6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise70%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise72%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise70%
    Buyer's Guide
    Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Grafana
    November 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: November 2023.
    746,723 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is ranked 20th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 5 reviews while Grafana is ranked 6th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 33 reviews. Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is rated 7.8, while Grafana is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) writes "Good logging and tracing but does need more profiling capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Grafana writes "Agent-free with great dashboards and an active community". Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is most compared with AWS X-Ray, Datadog, Azure Monitor, Amazon CloudWatch and New Relic, whereas Grafana is most compared with Azure Monitor, Dynatrace, New Relic, Sentry and AppDynamics. See our Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) 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.