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Elastic Observability vs Grafana 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

Elastic Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Log Management (14th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)
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
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 5.8%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 6.3%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments
The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."
"It is a powerful tool that allows users to collect and transform logs as needed, enabling flexible visualization and analysis."
"The price is very less expensive compared to the other solutions."
"Elastic provides built-in features for queries and report generation. It's a very good tool for monitoring integration capabilities."
"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."
"The architecture and system's stability are simple."
"The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle."
"For full stack observability, Elastic is the best tool compared with any other tool ."
"Grafana's best features are live monitoring and alerts."
"Provides good dashboard visualization."
"The best thing about Grafana is the visualization. The colors and the ease of use make it very user-friendly."
"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."
"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."
"Grafana provides a user-friendly interface for viewing infrastructure metrics through dashboards."
"Plugin: Connecting Grafana to multiple APIs of leading monitoring tools and alerting tools."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the UI dashboard because we need to create a dashboard on Grafana to monitor our data."
 

Cons

"More web features could be added to the product."
"Elastic Observability needs to improve the retrieval of logs and metrics from all the instances."
"Elastic Observability is an excellent product for monitoring and visibility, but it lacks predictive analytics. Most solutions are aligned with the AIOps requirements, but this piece is missing in Elastic and should be included."
"The auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome."
"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."
"When opening tickets, we cannot use our team mailbox."
"The price is the only issue in the solution. It can be made better and cheaper."
"Elastic Observability is difficult to use. There are only three options for customization but this can be difficult for our use case. We do not have other options to choose the metrics shown, such as CPU or memory usage."
"We need different kinds of applications in our infrastructure to see information in Grafana."
"The solution should include online support."
"There is room for improvement when using multiple dashboards because they can become complicated to keep track of and use."
"Writing queries can be a bit difficult because the syntax must be maintained."
"The interface is not well-liked by my customers."
"The documentation or training provided by Grafana is limited compared to its competitors, like Splunk."
"It would be helpful if Grafana provided more information and training on how to use Prometheus."
"Its UI features to create charts can also be improved. Some features could have a link to the documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."
"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."
"We have been using the open-source version."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."
"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 am using an open-source version"
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"We are using the open-source license."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
"I use the open source model so it is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?
Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.
What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?
Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank
Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Observability vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.