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Grafana vs OpenText Real User Monitoring comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

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
OpenText Real User Monitoring
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
34th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
11
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 Grafana is 2.6%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Real User Monitoring is 1.1%, up from 0.2% 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%
OpenText Real User Monitoring1.1%
Other96.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

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.
YA
Sr. Solution Architect, Project Manager at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
User-level monitoring with near-real-time analytics boosts service availability
The use case is about user-level monitoring and the availability of a service for a user. It's about whether the service is available, its performance, and the type of errors a user is receiving, from a user perspective The functions that Real User Monitor is intended for, which is to provide the…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Grafana provides a user-friendly interface for viewing infrastructure metrics through dashboards."
"The solution is adaptable, easy to use, and works well for microservices development."
"It is easy to change and move virtual servers."
"Almost any kind of visualization is possible with Grafana and all dashboards are configurable."
"The initial setup is straightforward with just a few clicks on the solution's cloud."
"With Grafana, we can identify in detail where issues come from and solve the problem."
"It's easy to make changes. We can put many dashboards in one place. There's no delay in showing data - what you see on Grafana matches the server metrics."
"The most valuable feature is application performance monitoring."
"The technical support is good at resolving issues."
"Very easy to implement."
"It is a good product."
"The Real User Monitor, with its transaction and synthetic transaction monitoring, is the typical classic in APM cases when the customer would like to do transaction monitoring. Micro Focus scores better where the underlying infrastructure management is also covered by Micro Focus tools."
"Real User Monitor does its job, and that is why we have stayed with it for so many years."
"The most useful feature of this solution is tracking. When the application's traffic has been monitored it is taken from that particular application and analyzed. It is then given a live session of that particular user. For example, if you are using your bank application to do some kind of transaction, everything that you do can be tracked by that application."
"The Micro Focus technical support is quite good."
 

Cons

"The features are complicated and not intuitive."
"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."
"Lacks in-depth graphs and sufficient AI."
"Trigger limits are difficult to see in a graph."
"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."
"The documentation or training provided by Grafana is limited compared to its competitors, like Splunk."
"The product could be improved with a feature that provides detailed error messages when we encounter issues."
"The product's configuration for saving files could be improved."
"When we want to monitor our encrypted traffic, this product doesn't work because our cipher is not supported."
"Everybody is moving away from traffic and installing agents on the application to do the job, but Micro Focus is using traditional ways to collect the traffic. They should change their architecture completely."
"The diagnostics perspective, particularly in terms of the root cause analysis of failures, should be improved."
"Most of the dashboards require a lot of configuration. We are not happy with the dashboard."
"Real User Monitor needs to cover more protocols to provide more in-depth information. It could also be better at monitoring voice-related traffic. There is currently no visibility in that channel."
"If it is a standalone solution, however, I would not recommend Micro Focus."
"One final complaint I have is that the roadmap from the vendor is not clear, which makes it less attractive to some customers."
"We would like to see support for non-Windows environments."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"I use the open source model so it is free."
"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 am using an open-source version"
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"Not expensive."
"Compared to other tools, OpenText Real User Monitoring is an expensive solution."
"If I compare with other vendors, other vendors are more expensive"
"The price is approximately €30,000 ($35,500 USD) for the enterprise edition."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Performing Arts
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Real User Monitor?
The diagnostics perspective, particularly in terms of the root cause analysis of failures, should be improved. There needs to be more development in this area, as the support and the number of peop...
What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Real User Monitor?
The use case is about user-level monitoring and the availability of a service for a user. It's about whether the service is available, its performance, and the type of errors a user is receiving, f...
What advice do you have for others considering Micro Focus Real User Monitor?
I rate the solution as nine. It is a good product. Everyone should have it as it is essential today, but choose the vendor accordingly. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Micro Focus Real User Monitor, Micro Focus RUM, HPE RUM
 

Overview

 

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.
Avea, Maccabi Healthcare Services, TEB
Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana vs. OpenText Real User Monitoring and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.