Grafana vs NETSCOUT Network &amp; Application Observability comparison

Grafana vs. NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability

November 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

5.4

Organizations using Grafana achieved up to 250% ROI, reduced costs, and improved monitoring and response times significantly.

Sentiment score

7.0

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability enhances uptime, productivity, and savings by reducing troubleshooting time and integrating well with existing products.

I can say the estimated return on investment was one hundred fifty percent to two hundred fifty percent within the first year due to the reduced downtime and faster troubleshooting.

Devops Engineer at AIQOD

I identified over-provisioned servers and reduced my AWS monthly bill by 15%, which is a significant saving in terms of costs.

For more quotes and insights, download the Grafana report

System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.2

Grafana's support receives mixed feedback, with praise for both its responsive technical team and effective community resources.

Sentiment score

5.9

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability support is praised for knowledgeable assistance, yet users desire quicker response times and more resources.

The technical support team is very helpful with complex PromQL troubleshooting.

System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

My advice for people who are new to Grafana or considering it is to reach out to the community mainly, as that's the primary benefit of Grafana.

Adam Russak

Sr. DevOps at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

The documentation is comprehensive, and the active community makes it easy to find solutions to common issues.

For more quotes and insights, download the Grafana report

Devops Engineer at AIQOD

They need to work on their response time and overall competence.

Regional Director at iSecureMind Integrated Solutions

The distributor's support is rated an eight out of ten, indicating room for improvement in SLA handling.

System Integrator at a construction company with 11-50 employees

I am actually happy with technical support from NETSCOUT.

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General Manager at MOCOMSYS

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

5.5

Grafana scales effectively with integrations, but some users find complexity and scaling costs challenging for extensive environments.

Sentiment score

8.0

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability is praised for scalability, though hardware costs challenge large-scale growth; appreciated for flexible architecture.

It is highly scalable and built on a big data architecture capable of ingesting trillions of data points.

System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

In terms of our company, the infrastructure is using two availability zones in AWS.

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DevOps Team Lead at Kadabra

In assessing Grafana's scalability, we started noticing logs missing or metrics not syncing in time.

Adam Russak

Sr. DevOps at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

The solution is highly scalable and accommodates the growth needs effectively.

System Integrator at a construction company with 11-50 employees

It is not similar to software solutions Datadog or Dynatrace where they can easily add agents without problems.

For more quotes and insights, download the NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability report

General Manager at MOCOMSYS

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.9

Grafana is stable and reliable with minimal downtime, though resource optimization is key to maintaining performance and integration issues may occur.

Sentiment score

8.1

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability is praised for reliability, though complex configurations and specific demands can cause occasional instability.

Stable in the sense that we have experienced minimal downtime, and it performs reliably for day-to-day monitoring and dashboard visualization.

Devops Engineer at AIQOD

When something in their dashboard does not work, because it is open source, I am able to find all the relative combinations that people are having, making it much easier for me to fix.

For more quotes and insights, download the Grafana report

DevOps Team Lead at Kadabra

Once you get to a higher load, you need to re-evaluate your architecture and put that into account.

Adam Russak

Sr. DevOps at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Datadog is more stable than NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, being a SaaS-based solution compared to on-prem solutions like NETSCOUT.

Regional Director at iSecureMind Integrated Solutions

I rate the stability of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE as ten out of ten since we have not experienced any escalations or downtime issues from the end user's side.

System Integrator at a construction company with 11-50 employees

Customers are more sensitive about NETSCOUT nGeniusONE's upgrades because it has hardware.

For more quotes and insights, download the NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability report

General Manager at MOCOMSYS

Room For Improvement

Grafana's usability suffers from complex UI, limited reporting, and integration challenges; enhancements in security, AI, and flexibility are needed.

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability requires interface simplification, better integration, enhanced analytics, reduced costs, and improved user experience and documentation.

Grafana cannot be easily embedded into certain applications and offers limited customization options for graphs.

Abdul Rahaman Abdul Rahim Lee

BI and Analytics Engineer at Sandvine Inc

I would want to see improvements, especially in the tracing part, where following different requests between different services could be more powerful.

reviewer1955814

Director of Engineering at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

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.

For more quotes and insights, download the Grafana report

DevOps Team Lead at Kadabra

Customers want to have service assurance, including NPM and APM, from one vendor.

Regional Director at iSecureMind Integrated Solutions

It would be beneficial to see more AI capabilities included in nGeniusONE to further streamline processes.

System Integrator at a construction company with 11-50 employees

Many big companies Samsung and Hyundai try to build their own monitoring solutions using open-source tools and their own engineers, though it has not been successful.

For more quotes and insights, download the NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability report

General Manager at MOCOMSYS

Setup Cost

Grafana's open-source is cost-effective, but enterprise edition pricing varies by usage and infrastructure, with cloud options available.

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability is costly but offers valuable features and flexible licensing, though enterprise deployment can be very expensive.

There were no licensing costs.

Devops Engineer at AIQOD

In an enterprise setting, pricing is reasonable, as many customers use it.

Vikash-Agarwal

Aplication Architect at Amazon

The costs associated with using Grafana are somewhere in the ten thousands because we are able to control the logs in a more efficient way to reduce it.

For more quotes and insights, download the Grafana report

DevOps Team Lead at Kadabra

The cost depends on the size of the customer, as sizing controls the pricing.

For more quotes and insights, download the NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability report

Regional Director at iSecureMind Integrated Solutions

Regarding its high price, I give NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a seven.

Hasan Toffaha

Newwork And Collaboration Supervisor at Nafeza

Valuable Features

Grafana offers user-friendly dashboards, customizable visualizations, seamless integrations, effective alerts, scalability, and community support for enhanced monitoring.

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability provides comprehensive network analysis, offering visibility and quick issue resolution through its user-friendly interface and robust features.

Users can monitor metrics with greater ease, and the tool aids in quickly identifying issues by providing a visual representation of data.

Vikash-Agarwal

Aplication Architect at Amazon

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.

For more quotes and insights, download the Grafana report

System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

You can check those metrics in the incident management tool by filtering the alert source as Grafana, and it helps in reducing production incidents because you can acknowledge and visualize the metrics from Grafana on time.

HemantKumar7

Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

The capability of real-time traffic intelligence is also very useful because it allows for the comparison between real-time and historical packet levels.

Regional Director at iSecureMind Integrated Solutions

Their analysis capability actually surpasses other APM solutions, which is why customers love it.

For more quotes and insights, download the NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability report

General Manager at MOCOMSYS

NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE has an easier dashboard to manipulate compared to SolarWinds.

Ian Munoz

Ingeniero en Telecomunicaciones at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Categories and Ranking

Grafana

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NETSCOUT Network & Applicat...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

46th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (7th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (29th), Network Troubleshooting (12th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Grafana is 2.3%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Grafana	2.3%
NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability	0.8%
Other	96.9%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Proactive monitoring has transformed how our teams detect issues and resolve incidents faster

Devops Engineer at AIQOD

For improving Grafana, the alert configuration could be more intuitive for new users. Dashboard management becomes complex in large environments. So if we have multiple environments and we have to manage our dashboards for them, sometimes it becomes complicated to manage all the dashboards. The learning curve is steep for beginners. More built-in reporting and analytics features would be helpful. Documentation for advanced features could be more detailed. Role-based access management could be simpler to configure. Performance could be optimized for very large dashboards with high cardinality data sources. Grafana could improve its alert configuration workflow and make advanced dashboard management easier for new users. More built-in reporting features would also be beneficial. A simpler onboarding experience for first-time users and more built-in dashboard templates for common monitoring scenarios would be helpful. Grafana is a powerful monitoring platform, but it could improve dashboard organization in large environments, simplify alert management, provide more built-in reporting capabilities, enhance plugin compatibility during upgrades, and offer better AI-driven insights for fast root cause analysis. For example, if we are hitting a CPU metric of ninety to ninety-five percent or a system load of seventy to eighty percent, we have to act on that. But if Grafana suggests something on that metric, such as an AI suggestion, it would be more helpful. We could get an idea of how to solve that issue. For the Grafana dashboards, they could provide more built-in compliance and audit reporting, enhance AI recommendations with clearer explanations of why an issue was flagged, enhance accessibility and keyboard navigation, add more native integrations with emerging cloud and DevOps tools, and improve scalability for very large enterprise deployments. Grafana is a mature platform, but it could benefit from better dashboard version control, simpler environment migration, enhanced AI explanations, more built-in reporting, and improved performance for large-scale deployments with complex dashboards.

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Hasan Toffaha

Newwork And Collaboration Supervisor at Nafeza

Monitoring has improved bandwidth insights and application diagnosis but setup and costs still need work

They need room for improvement about the spare parts. There are shortages in Egypt in their stock. We tried to make RMA for specific parts, and it took a long time. Comparing this to a vendor like Cisco, who provides any component next business day, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE took a long time. This needs more improvement. I believe it is expensive. They need to reduce its budget a little bit. Comparing to other solutions, it is very expensive.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Construction Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	27

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	59

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?

We are using the community edition. We have used the community edition, the open-source edition. So, there were no licensing costs. The setup was straightforward, and the main investment was the ti...

What needs improvement with Grafana?

What is your primary use case for Grafana?

The main use case for Grafana is that we are using Prometheus to collect the metrics, and primarily use Grafana for infrastructure and application monitoring. It helps me visualize system metrics t...

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?

Regarding its high price, I give NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a seven.

What needs improvement with NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?

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Product Reports

Download Grafana product report

Grafana

October 2026

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability

October 2026

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability report

Download NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability product report

Also Known As

No data available

NETSCOUT nGenius, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE, NETSCOUT vSTREAM, NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG, TruView

Overview

Grafana offers a customizable, user-friendly platform for robust data visualization and integration, enhancing real-time monitoring with extensive alerting and collaboration capabilities supported by an active open-source community.

Grafana stands out for its flexible dashboards and robust visualization options, integrating smoothly with tools like Prometheus. This open-source platform supports diverse environments, aiding in the visualization of IT infrastructure and business analytics. Its alerting system efficiently supports real-time monitoring. While it is praised for its community backing and cost-effectiveness, there is demand for better data aggregation, intuitive interfaces, and enhanced documentation compared to competitors such as Splunk. Simplification of configuration and the interface is sought, alongside improvements in machine learning and reporting features.

What are Grafana's most important features?

Customizable Dashboards: User-friendly, richly customizable dashboards for precise data presentation.
Visualization Capabilities: Strong support for visualizing complex datasets from multiple sources.
Integration Options: Extensive compatibility with data sources and tools like Prometheus.
Alerting System: Efficient real-time monitoring and issue identification.
Open-Source Nature: Supported by a vibrant community, offering a cost-effective solution.

What benefits or ROI should users seek in Grafana reviews?

Adaptability: Supports diverse environments and use cases.
Cost-Effectiveness: Offers valuable features at a competitive price.
Community Support: Backed by an active and vibrant open-source community.
Collaborative Platform: Seamless integration with various data tools refining monitoring and analytics efforts.

Grafana is implemented widely across industries for monitoring IT infrastructure and visualizing business analytics. Companies utilize it to analyze server performance or monitor Kubernetes environments and payment transactions. The platform integrates with AWS services and other data sources to ensure observability and system health tracking, focusing on performance metrics through customized dashboards and alerts. Organizations employ Grafana to bolster observability and optimize infrastructure through robust data insights.

Grafana Labs

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability enhances network operations by offering powerful packet analysis and real-time insights. It transforms raw data into intelligence and simplifies troubleshooting, ensuring effective monitoring across diverse platforms.

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability delivers comprehensive visibility and interoperability with a single pane of glass to aid in quick troubleshooting and traffic monitoring. It provides real-time insights and metrics that enhance network evaluations, helping transform raw data into actionable intelligence for better performance monitoring across diverse environments. However, it faces challenges like complexity, non-intuitive dashboard setup, and high server requirements. Enhancements in data analysis, visualization, and security features, along with improved integration with other products and detailed alerts, are needed.

What are the key features of NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability?

Packet Analysis: Provides robust packet capture and analysis for deep insights.
Single Pane of Glass: Simplifies traffic monitoring and dependency mapping.
Real-Time Insights: Offers instant, actionable information for troubleshooting.
Application Performance Metrics: Evaluates performance across network applications.
Interoperability: Ensures seamless operation across various network environments.

What benefits do users highlight?

Actionable Intelligence: Transforms raw data for strategic decisions.
Enhanced Monitoring: Facilitates efficient network operation monitoring.
Proactive Alerting: Supports real-time issue identification and response.
Bandwidth Management: Optimizes resource usage for cost efficiency.
Application Management: Monitors application performance for better user experience.

NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability is widely implemented in industries such as telecom and banking for network troubleshooting and application performance management. It helps in monitoring infrastructure, capturing unknown traffic, and managing bandwidth. The tool supports security alerts, real-time communications analysis, and proactive monitoring of remote sites, aiding in efficient network operations and enhanced end-user experience.

NETSCOUT

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.

Cerner Corporation