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

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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 Log Management
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (26th), Cloud Monitoring Software (21st)
Grafana Loki
Ranking in Log Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 0.6%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana Loki is 8.7%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
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 BigQuery 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.
Volodymyr Bondarchuk - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrations enhance monitoring but problem-solving proves challenging
Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself. As part of Kubernetes technology, I noticed benefits from using this product such as availability, configuration balancing, high availability solutions for high performance, and failover clustering. It provides a clear picture about the state of the system and gives needed information for taking action and quickly fixing problems.

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."
"I like the monitoring feature."
"Offers a valuable logging transport feature"
"The most valuable feature is the multi-cloud integration, where there is support for both GCP and AWS."
"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"Google's technical support is very good."
"The effectiveness of filters is pivotal for optimizing the search process and extracting the specific information we need from the extensive log data."
"Loki also utilizes the same service discovery mechanism as used by Prometheus. So, whatever labeled metadata you see in Prometheus, you have the exact same metadata in the Loki system. Given this level of intricacy and the attempt to address these challenges, I firmly believe that Loki deserves praise for the work."
"The product's most valuable features are ease of installation, management, and reporting. It has an efficient ability to set thresholds for alerts, as well."
"The tool can be used in multi-cluster environments."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the tool's GUI. The solution's GUI is very user-friendly."
"Loki significantly saves time in troubleshooting by quickly pinpointing network issues."
"Different types of integrations with various sources are the most helpful and useful features of Grafana Loki that I found for myself."
"The solution's stability has never been a problem. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."
"It could be even more automated."
"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."
"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."
"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."
"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."
"The process of logging analytics can be improved"
"The Docker container partition feature needs improvement as they do not reuse the space and goes into a pending state."
"It's not intended for proprietary services, so you have to struggle with configuration a lot."
"The platform's stability needs improvement."
"There is a need for some change in the alerting types of the product. In short, a few changes in the alert area are needed due to minor shortcomings."
"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features that need improvement."
"We had a well-structured dashboard with a functional query. However, an issue arose when the Kubernetes pod restarted. The statistics from our Grafana query would reset, dropping to zero and starting anew. This was particularly noticeable with linear graphs, which are expected to show consistent growth."
"I do not see any areas for improvement at the moment."
"We face some bugs when we install the latest version of Grafana Loki."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
"The cost could be lower."
"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."
"You can use the free version of Grafana Loki on-premises."
"The cost is less than other paid services like CloudWatch."
"Grafana Loki is an open-source solution."
"I find the licensing structure quite reasonable, as the free license effectively meets my requirements."
"I use the open-source version of the product."
"My company doesn't need to pay for the licensing cost of the solution."
"The solution is open source."
"I use the solution's open-source version. Grafana Loki is a completely free solution for me."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 advice do you have for others considering Google Stackdriver?
The Ops Agent and logging transport feature of the solution have had a major impact on improving application performance. The solution also allows the transport of logs into log buckets, which is h...
What do you like most about Grafana Loki?
We are using Grafana Loki as a database for real-time metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana Loki?
We use the open-source version of Loki. The cloud version is competitively priced compared to other market solutions.
What needs improvement with Grafana Loki?
It would be beneficial if Loki could directly access Windows Server logs or events directly from the servers.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Grafana Loki and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.