Grafana Reviews

Name: Grafana
Brand: Grafana Labs
Rating: 3.9 (42 reviews)

3.9 out of 5

42 reviews
85% willing to recommend

194 followers

What is Grafana?

Grafana is an open-source visualization and analytics platform that stands out in the field of monitoring solutions. Grafana is widely recognized for its powerful, easy-to-set-up dashboards and visualizations. Grafana supports integration with a wide array of data sources and tools, including Prometheus, InfluxDB, MySQL, Splunk, and Elasticsearch, enhancing its versatility. Grafana has open-source and cloud options; the open-source version is a good choice for organizations with the resources to manage their infrastructure and want more control over their deployment. The cloud service is a good choice if you want a fully managed solution that is easy to start with and scale.

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Grafana is the #6 ranked solution in APM tools. PeerSpot users give Grafana an average rating of 7.8 out of 10. Grafana is most commonly compared to Dynatrace: Grafana vs Dynatrace. Grafana is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 69% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a financial services firm, accounting for 21% of all views.

Helped 831,071 peers since 2012

Featured reviews

Vikash-Agarwal

Aplication Architect at Amazon

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.

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AbhishekGupta

Engineering Leader at Walmart

We are using Grafana for observability dashboards Grafana has helped our organization with observability and operational excellence. Operational excellence is a key part of any organization from a data platform perspective and setting the alerts and monitoring policies on Grafana was easy. The…

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Sarthak Kushwaha

Software Development Engineer I / Backend Engineer at Primathon

One thing I got to know is that Grafana doesn't provide anything for reporting. As a DevOps engineer, I would like to get a weekly report expressing the system's overall performance in the last week. For example, how many alerts were triggered, how many APIs responded with bad requests, and how many failures occurred? All these things are generally required at the beginning of the week so that we can better research and optimize everything that's required. Currently, Grafana sends a PDF version of the report, and they are not doing anything beyond that. So, that's a feature that Grafana can work on to make it more accurate and better. In the additional features, I would like to see logs. Logs are basically created when an API is hit. The log contains information such as the API that was hit, the status code, and the time taken. For instance, the log file would store the error message if there was an error in the API. It makes it easier for the developer to debug the API that showed an error. Grafana claims that it has Loki, which is used for logging and saving logs. However, I could not configure Loki with Grafana to see my logs. Grafana could look into this field and make changes to improve it.

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Grafana mindshare

As of January 2025, the mindshare of Grafana in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category stands at 7.2%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

PeerAnalyst reports

Type	Title	Date
Category	Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability	Jan 18, 2025	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Jan 18, 2025	Download
Comparison	Grafana vs Datadog	Jan 18, 2025	Download
Comparison	Grafana vs Dynatrace	Jan 18, 2025	Download
Comparison	Grafana vs New Relic	Jan 18, 2025	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
Dynatrace	4.4	12.4%	95%	344 interviews Add to research
Datadog	4.3	9.9%	96%	186 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

Grafana's most valuable features include its impressive dashboards and customizable visualizations that connect with multiple data sources. Users appreciate the ease of use, integration capabilities, and strong community support. Live monitoring and alerting, along with flexible plugin usage and user-friendly interface, contribute to its appeal. The open-source nature saves costs while offering robust functionality. The interface allows advanced graph creation and import/export functionalities enabling efficient data monitoring and issue identification, enhancing productivity and observability.

"I find Grafana beneficial due to its numerous plugins."
"I find Grafana beneficial due to its numerous plugins."
"Grafana provides a user-friendly interface for viewing infrastructure metrics through dashboards."

Room for Improvement

Grafana benefits from enhancing security features and documentation. Users find it challenging to aggregate data from multiple sources and express a need for better reporting capabilities and machine learning functionalities. Performance issues arise when querying data and setting up dashboards. Improvements in the user interface, integration with other tools, alerting functions, and plugin availability are necessary. Grafana's reliance on external query languages like Prometheus can complicate its usage.

"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 interface is not well-liked by my customers."
"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."

ROI

Users report a 100% return on investment with Grafana enhancing data visualization and analytics. Its appeal extends to senior management who appreciate visualized data insights. Grafana facilitates easy management of monitoring and alerting policies, proving cost-effective for providing a clear view of applications and infrastructure. Usage and results are appreciated across the company.

Pricing

Grafana offers both free open-source and paid enterprise versions. Many users opt for the open-source version due to its cost-effectiveness and sufficient features for visualization paired with Prometheus for monitoring. However, enterprise buyers might encounter costs, especially for integrations like MongoDB, which require the enterprise edition. Pricing varies based on infrastructure and metric ingestion needs, making it generally reasonable and adaptable to various organizational requirements.

"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."
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"I am using an open-source version"

Popular Use Cases

Grafana is primarily used by organizations for monitoring and data visualization. It displays dashboards for data analytics, IT infrastructure, payment transactions, e-commerce, and business metrics. Integrated with tools like Zabbix and Prometheus, it effectively monitors CPU, applications, servers, and networks. Grafana supports real-time tracking, alerting, and analysis for Kubernetes, Java applications, Spring Boot, and financial systems, offering detailed insights into system performance, user behavior, and transactional activities.

Service and Support

Community support for Grafana is effective, with sufficient documentation to resolve issues. Many rely on the community's expertise and the open forum provides prompt responses. Professional support teams for enterprise and pro users are available and provide efficient assistance. Some have raised tickets and found support to be responsive and knowledgeable. Many prefer using online forums instead of direct support, but those who have engaged find it satisfactory.

Deployment

Grafana's initial setup is generally straightforward, especially with documentation aid. Deployment duration varies; experienced users find it easy, but beginners may face challenges. Configuration for LDAP authentication and resource tuning can be complex. Familiarity with Grafana eases the process, while beginners might require guidance. Setup ease is enhanced when using Docker or Kubernetes, although writing custom metrics is challenging. Self-hosted setups involve step-by-step configurations, and some environments take time to adapt fully.

Scalability

Grafana is considered scalable by many users, with successful implementation across various environments and organizations. While users note potential challenges in scaling, particularly when using open-source versions, Grafana is still highly utilized for monitoring, dashboards, and integration with other systems. It supports numerous users without issue, although scaling can impact costs. Users report it accommodates different metrics and environments, with high availability features available. However, some suggest scalability improvements could enhance its effectiveness.

Stability

Grafana demonstrates high stability with consistent reliability, minimal bugs, and no frequent crashes. Users report smooth performance when resources are well-managed, though CPU and memory consumption can be demanding. A few mention occasional issues like automatic shutdowns or service errors. Ratings range from seven to nine out of ten. While most are satisfied, some find other tools like Dynatrace and ELK more stable. The cloud version often surpasses on-premises in performance.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our Grafana Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Review data by company size

By reviewers

By visitors reading reviews

Top industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Retailer

Comms Service Provider

University

Government

Media Company

Healthcare Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

Real Estate/Law Firm

Non Profit

Hospitality Company

Outsourcing Company

Construction Company

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Wholesaler/Distributor

Legal Firm

Logistics Company

Consumer Goods Company

Transportation Company

Performing Arts

Pharma/Biotech Company

Engineering Company

Compare Grafana with alternative products

Learn more about Grafana

A key strength of Grafana lies in its ability to explore, visualize, query, and alert on the collected data through operational dashboards. These dashboards are highly customizable and visually appealing, making them a valuable asset for data analysis, performance tracking, trend spotting, and detecting irregularities.

Grafana provides both an open-source solution with an active community and Grafana Cloud, a fully managed and composable observability offering that packages together metrics, logs, and traces with Grafana. The open-source version is licensed under the Affero General Public License version 3.0 (AGPLv3), being free and unlimited. Grafana Cloud and Grafana Enterprise are available for more advanced needs, catering to a wider range of organizational requirements. Grafana offers options for self-managed backend systems or fully managed services via Grafana Cloud. Grafana Cloud extends observability with a wide range of solutions for infrastructure monitoring, IRM, load testing, Kubernetes monitoring, continuous profiling, frontend observability, and more.

The Grafana users we interviewed generally appreciate Grafana's ability to connect with various data sources, its straightforward usability, and its integration capabilities, especially in developer-oriented environments. The platform is noted for its practical alert configurations, ticketing backend integration, and as a powerful tool for developing dashboards. However, some users find a learning curve in the initial setup and mention the need for time investment to customize and leverage Grafana effectively. There are also calls for clearer documentation and simplification of notification alert templates.

In summary, Grafana is a comprehensive solution for data visualization and monitoring, widely used across industries for its versatility, ease of use, and extensive integration options. It suits organizations seeking a customizable and scalable platform for visualizing time-series data from diverse sources. However, users should be prepared for some complexity in setup and customization and may need to invest time in learning and tailoring the system to their specific needs.

Grafana 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.