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Grafana vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 2025

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
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th), Container Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Grafana is 6.4%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Vikash-Agarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Displays data visually from multiple sources while integrating seamlessly with existing systems
Grafana provides a user-friendly interface for viewing infrastructure metrics through dashboards. It integrates with Prometheus to pull data and offers a straightforward setup process. Users can monitor metrics with greater ease, and the tool aids in quickly identifying issues by providing a visual representation of data. Grafana's integration capability is straightforward, which facilitates building dashboards as needed.
Lakshmi Padaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection
Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I found most valuable in Grafana is that it has a lot of integrations and features that I need for data processing and visualization."
"Grafana's best features are live monitoring and alerts."
"It integrates well with other solutions."
"Compatibility with Prometheus databases and the Spring Boot application make it the first choice when moving toward an SRE model."
"Plugin: Connecting Grafana to multiple APIs of leading monitoring tools and alerting tools."
"I find Grafana beneficial due to its numerous plugins."
"The integration between Loki and Tempo is valuable."
"It provides a graphical representation and it's clear to see what's happening."
"I like the fact that Splunk APM makes it easy to connect to the application database and run queries against the data."
"I have primarily used it to go back into the past and understand why something happened. It provides enough information to do research and figure things out."
"The solution's basic visibility is one of its most valuable features. So, it is a solution that is easy to use...The solution's initial setup process was straightforward."
"The tool is efficient in collecting, monitoring and evaluating logs."
"It supports proactive management, enhances security, and improves operational efficiency."
"Splunk APM helps us to find errors immediately and resolve them."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is its ability to get information about all of the security measurements in my environment."
"The most valuable thing that we have seen within our group is the ability to ingest all this raw data and have it organized in a certain way so that different groups can get effective alerting from this massive amount of raw data that is out there."
 

Cons

"I find issues with Grafana. For example, I am unable to open some services there. Then, we have to open ten different tabs to get it fixed. And it's annoying when there's something going on; we want to check Grafana, and it throws four different errors."
"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."
"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."
"The interface is not well-liked by my customers. Grafana cannot be easily embedded into certain applications and offers limited customization options for graphs."
"The main drawback is the necessity for endpoint monitoring."
"The solution must provide tutorials and guides."
"If there was an issue on one node, we couldn't drill down and see all the issues on other nodes."
"Grafana doesn't provide anything for reporting."
"The dashboards are used mainly to visualize information about the infrastructure, but it isn't easy to construct or use the dashboards. While we tried to resolve the issue by calling support, it would be easier if they had an AI co-pilot to identify the problem and help you solve it."
"The product collects a lot of data but it does not assure that it collects all of it."
"It is essential for the monitoring tool to deliver quick response times when generating analytical reports, instead of prolonged delays."
"The solution's stability is an area that has room for improvement. It needs to provide constant stability to its users."
"In the next release, I would like to see more integration with other solutions."
"Splunk could be better integrated with configuration manager solutions so we can automatically resolve issues without human interference."
"We currently lack log analysis capabilities in Splunk APM."
"It would be useful if they provided some help pages. If you don't know too much about the tool, there should be more documentation readily available. It would be useful if they had a help button embedded in the solution so you could ask questions and get answers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"I use the open source model so it is free."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are using the open-source license."
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"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."
"My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."
"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."
"It is expensive."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"The product is a bit expensive considering the competition but the company may negotiate the price."
"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Grafana?
The product's initial setup phase was very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?
I used the open-source version for my learning, which was free. In an enterprise setting, pricing is reasonable, as many customers use it.
What needs improvement with Grafana?
The interface is not well-liked by my customers. Grafana cannot be easily embedded into certain applications and offers limited customization options for graphs. I think predictive capabilities in ...
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts. The custom detector could be m...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The main purpose of using Splunk APM is to optimize our application. We use Splunk APM primarily to understand how the application works, how it uses resources, and its response time in connection ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring
 

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.
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.