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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
6.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (7th), Log Management (12th), 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 January 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 6.4%, up from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 7.2%, up from 5.7% 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

"I recommend Elastic Observability for its completeness of vision and wide ecosystem."
"The most valuable feature of Elastic Observability is the text search."
"Elastic APM has plenty of features, such as the Elastic server for Kibana and many additional plugins. It's a comprehensive tool when used as a logging platform."
"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 over a month from multiple data sources can be completed within seconds."
"Elastic team communicated well with us, so we decided to give it a try."
"The price is very less expensive compared to the other solutions."
"We use AppDynamics and Elastic. The reason why we're using Elastic APM is because of the license count. It's very favorable compared to AppDynamics. It's inexpensive; it's economical."
"It is a powerful tool that allows users to collect and transform logs as needed, enabling flexible visualization and analysis."
"We like the alert features."
"The dashboards are the most valuable features."
"The installation process is easy. We have deployed it on the cloud. I have around 20 to 30 people using the solution in my company."
"Almost any kind of visualization is possible with Grafana and all dashboards are configurable."
"It has good stability."
"The most valuable aspect is customization. There are many customizations possible, so I like that."
"The dashboards are very easy to work with."
"We can write queries in different languages, which is beneficial for visualization."
 

Cons

"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."
"Elastic Observability needs to have better standardization, logging, and schema."
"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."
"Elastic APM's visualization is not that great compared to other tools. It's number of metrics is very low."
"When opening tickets, we cannot use our team mailbox."
"One example is the inability to monitor very old databases with the newest version."
"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."
"The solution needs to use more AI. Once the product onboards AI, users would more effectively be able to track endpoints for specific messages."
"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."
"Grafana doesn't provide anything for reporting."
"Writing queries can be a bit difficult because the syntax must be maintained."
"The solution should include online support."
"There is a need for improvement in automating daily monitoring reports, especially when alerts are triggered due to system downtimes or fluctuations."
"The solution has room for improvement with a better API to help automate the construction of the dashboards easier."
"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."
"Multiple dashboards combined into one dashboard has slowed things down for us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"The product is not that cheap."
"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."
"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."
"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."
"We will buy a premium license after POC."
"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."
"We have been using the open-source version."
"The solution is expensive."
"I use the open source model so it is free."
"I am using an open-source version"
"We are using the open-source license."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
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?
Elastic Observability could improve asset discovery as the current requirement to push the agent is not ideal. Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial.
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?
Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution.
 

Comparisons

 

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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.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.