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Grafana vs OpenText Real User Monitoring 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

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
OpenText Real User Monitoring
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
36th
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 May 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Grafana is 2.7%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Real User Monitoring is 0.9%, 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 (%)
Grafana2.7%
OpenText Real User Monitoring0.9%
Other96.4%
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

"It provides a graphical representation and it's clear to see what's happening."
"Grafana is stable and has great engineers."
"The best feature was the creation of graphs and trends."
"The solution's application server is easy to use and its overall architecture is better for development."
"It is easy to change and move virtual servers."
"Grafana's best features are live monitoring and alerts."
"This solution provides valuable insights into the health of our infrastructure in real time."
"Grafana has improved our analysis capability to solve an issue, increasing the co-working between IT services and business services."
"Real User Monitor has improved our productivity."
"If you have an old-fashioned infrastructure with data center servers then this is a good solution for you."
"The most valuable feature is application performance monitoring."
"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."
"We use RUM and BSM and so far it has been really good at getting real user transactions from a real user monitor and then tying it to a BSM single view dashboard, where we get the whole realistic picture."
"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 has made it easier to drill down and see how users connect to and use our website."
"Real User Monitor does its job, and that is why we have stayed with it for so many years."
 

Cons

"All the features are complicated."
"Its UI features to create charts can also be improved. Some features could have a link to the documentation."
"It's difficult to see the trends on the graph when the range is too long."
"Multiple dashboards combined into one dashboard has slowed things down for us."
"We need different kinds of applications in our infrastructure to see information in Grafana."
"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."
"One area for improvement in Grafana is that depending on your version, you have to pay for the features, making the license expensive. It would be great if the licensing model could be more flexible. In the next release of Grafana, I want cluster creation to be available, which would help in Grafana deployment and scaling. Currently, the scaling process for the solution is a bit complicated."
"It can take a considerable amount of time to learn the graphs if a long duration is selected."
"If it is a standalone solution, however, I would not recommend Micro Focus."
"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."
"When we want to monitor our encrypted traffic, this product doesn't work because our cipher is not supported."
"Customer support needs to improve by bringing in more people who are knowledgeable about the tool, as there are very few left."
"The product needs more R&D to make it easier and more compatible with other software."
"One area to improve is the user interface, of course. The second one is their R&D has virtually stopped building a product roadmap."
"The diagnostics perspective, particularly in terms of the root cause analysis of failures, should be improved."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"If I compare with other vendors, other vendors are more expensive"
"Compared to other tools, OpenText Real User Monitoring is an expensive solution."
"Not 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
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
17%
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: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.