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Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) 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

Google Cloud's operations s...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
26th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (23rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (16th)
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
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 0.9%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 2.7%, down from 6.8% 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%
Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)0.9%
Other96.4%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Architect at T-Systems International GmbH
Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations
As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or Big Query can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings. It has default integration for all gcp services. recently managed Prometheus support gives more flexibility to organizations to remain connected with their current Prometheus setup. We leveraged integrated FinOps Hub for recommendations for our workloads and server configurations, helpd us lot in order to get maximum TCO.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has reduced the amount of time that we would take for troubleshooting."
"Google's technical support is very good."
"It's easy to use."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or at a VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."
"The most valuable feature is the multi-cloud integration, where there is support for both GCP and AWS."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."
"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."
"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."
"The features I appreciate most are the dashboards and the integrations with multiple data sources."
"I find Grafana beneficial due to its numerous plugins."
"The most valuable aspect is customization. There are many customizations possible, so I like that."
"Great capacity planning and the solution has a great GUI."
"There are multiple kinds of models there to create dashboards, which is quite useful."
"The dashboards are the most valuable features."
"This solution provides valuable insights into the health of our infrastructure in real time."
"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."
 

Cons

"The logging functionality could be better."
"Lacking sufficient operations documentation."
"While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace."
"The logging functionality could be better."
"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."
"It could be more stable."
"Operations documentation could be a bit better. It took us some time to get up and running with it."
"It could be even more automated."
"The main drawback is the necessity for endpoint monitoring."
"In assessing Grafana's scalability, we started noticing logs missing or metrics not syncing in time, which indicated a bottleneck that we had to address by updating the infrastructure."
"I would give it a ten if it were much simpler for users who just want to get a simple objective in Grafana and are not experienced with technical configuration."
"I don't believe that Grafana fulfilled the requirements completely. That's why we moved to Datadog."
"The interface is not well-liked by my customers."
"I have a problem with Grafana in the area of documentation."
"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."
"Trigger limits are difficult to see in a graph."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."
"The cost could be lower."
"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"We are using the open-source license."
"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
15%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Stackdriver?
As Ops Suite, is a google product which effectively comes at zero setup cost, in order to manage your on-premises logs on onsite, it involves negligible cost for using ops agent and it also include...
What needs improvement with Google Stackdriver?
If the errors are caught early in the interface, it would be easier for users to manage. The process of logging analytics can be improved.
What is your primary use case for Google Stackdriver?
I use the solution for logging, defining alerts, and monitoring. Our company's Java and Python logging teams mainly use it.
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...
 

Also Known As

Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
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 Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.