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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
7.4
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th), Container Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Grafana is 6.4%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 1.0%, 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

"Grafana provides a user-friendly interface for viewing infrastructure metrics through dashboards."
"It provides a graphical representation and it's clear to see what's happening."
"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."
"It excels in providing comprehensive details when there are downtimes or fluctuations, offering thorough reports."
"This solution provides valuable insights into the health of our infrastructure in real time."
"The most important feature of Grafana is its alarm formatting capability."
"Grafana is able to connect with multiple data sources, unlike Elasticsearch."
"The most valuable thing was that it had a good visualization tool."
"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 most beneficial aspect of Splunk APM is the ATM, which is the map displaying the inbound and outbound relationships of the microservices, as well as the traffic between these dependencies. This feature provides us with valuable insights and helps us understand the interactions between different microservices."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is its ability to get information about all of the security measurements in my environment."
"It's a very easy-to-use solution."
"The most valuable features are troubleshooting and optimizing application performance."
"The feature I find most valuable, is the data integration."
"Splunk APM provides a holistic view of the application. Unlike other APMs, Splunk's service map is quite effective."
 

Cons

"I have a problem with Grafana in the area of documentation."
"More dashboard is required, out-of-the-box, for OpenNMS."
"It's difficult to see the trends on the graph when the range is too long."
"​The security needs to be improved, such as the capacity to add permissions on dashboards.​"
"The product's configuration for saving files could be improved."
"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 solution must provide tutorials and guides."
"There is a need for improvement in automating daily monitoring reports, especially when alerts are triggered due to system downtimes or fluctuations."
"It does not have a user-friendly interface and it is difficult to use."
"It's a bit difficult to use. It takes some time to get into it and to get it to do what you would like it to do. It is not straightforward to use it."
"A wide variety of logging makes log onboarding difficult."
"The solution's stability is an area that has room for improvement. It needs to provide constant stability to its users."
"This solution is difficult to configure and the instructions are complex."
"There are some predefined metrics.......we may want to create customized metrics."
"The UI enhancements could be a way to improve the solution in the future."
"Splunk would be better if some tools were integrated to be able to take action on security or network concerns."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"I am using an open-source version"
"We are using the open-source license."
"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"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."
"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."
"The pricing is based on several factors, including the scale of deployment."
"The product is a bit expensive considering the competition but the company may negotiate the price."
"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."
"I am not in that circle, but we are currently licensing based on our queries. That is working out for us. Previously, it was by volume of data, and now, we can store as much data as we want."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"Licensing cost is the biggest argument I get from those divesting from Splunk. There are those within our organization who say we are going to go to other tools since Splunk is too expensive."
"The price of Splunk APM is less than some of its competitors."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
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.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.