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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 (23rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (16th)
Grafana
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
6th
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 May 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 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 2.7%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Grafana2.7%
Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)0.9%
Other96.4%
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

"It's easy to use."
"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."
"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."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"The most valuable feature is the multi-cloud integration, where there is support for both GCP and AWS."
"Google Stackdriver is all about activity."
"The most valuable feature is the multi-cloud integration, where there is support for both GCP and AWS."
"I find Grafana beneficial due to its numerous plugins."
"It has good stability."
"The comparison feature is very good."
"Visualisation: It is easy to create beautiful, understanding graphs, snapshots to share the graphs with people who do not have access to Grafana, and templating to create powerful graphs."
"Kubernetes could help us to better visualize the trend of our data by recording and displaying our history over a chosen duration, such as the last 30 days."
"Almost any kind of visualization is possible with Grafana and all dashboards are configurable."
"The installation process is easy. We have deployed it on the cloud. I have around 20 to 30 people using the solution in my company."
"There are multiple kinds of models there to create dashboards, which is quite useful."
 

Cons

"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."
"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana."
"It could be even more automated."
"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."
"The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient."
"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."
"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it."
"I find that the alerting UI in Grafana can be complex for new users."
"Lacks event management which affects our DevOps people."
"The solution must provide tutorials and guides."
"The product could be improved with a feature that provides detailed error messages when we encounter issues."
"Grafana doesn't provide anything for reporting."
"The features are complicated and not intuitive."
"Regarding joining between queries, merging between two queries that give the same information could be simple, and there are some ways to do that, but if there was something even easier, it would be great."
"It's difficult to see the trends on the graph when the range is too long."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
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 needs improvement with Google Stackdriver?
If the errors are caught early in the interface, it would be easier for users to manage. The process of logging analytics can be improved.
What is your primary use case for Google Stackdriver?
I use the solution for logging, defining alerts, and monitoring. Our company's Java and Python logging teams mainly use it.
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: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.