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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 (10th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th), Container Management (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Grafana is 6.3%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 0.9%, 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

"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."
"Kubernetes could help us to better visualize the trend of our data by recording and displaying our history over a chosen duration, such as the last 30 days."
"Compatibility with Prometheus databases and the Spring Boot application make it the first choice when moving toward an SRE model."
"We like the alert features."
"It provides a graphical representation and it's clear to see what's happening."
"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."
"Detectors are a powerful feature."
"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."
"Once configured correctly, the analysis reporting the Splunk APM provides is better than that of the other APM tools."
"It's a very easy-to-use solution."
"The data collection from our VMs, containers, databases, and backend components is valuable."
"Great monitoring of network devices."
"The feature I find most valuable, is the data integration."
"This solution is very quick to deploy as it is a SaaS solution and integrates with tools like ServiceNow."
 

Cons

"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."
"Setting up alerts via Grafana is a bit complicated, and alerting needs to improve."
"There is room for improvement when using multiple dashboards because they can become complicated to keep track of and use."
"Grafana doesn't provide anything for reporting."
"Multiple dashboards combined into one dashboard has slowed things down for us."
"​The security needs to be improved, such as the capacity to add permissions on dashboards.​"
"All the features are complicated."
"Writing queries can be a bit difficult because the syntax must be maintained."
"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring's data analytics can be improved by including suggestions for various types of continuous monitoring."
"Splunk APM's performance could be improved - at the moment, it's very slow and takes forever to give me what I want."
"The UI enhancements could be a way to improve the solution in the future."
"There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available."
"The product collects a lot of data but it does not assure that it collects all of it."
"Splunk isn't an ideal tool for application performance management due to the extensive setup required."
"The dashboards are used mainly to visualize information about the infrastructure, but it isn't easy to construct or use the dashboards. While we tried to resolve the issue by calling support, it would be easier if they had an AI co-pilot to identify the problem and help you solve it."
"The implementation can be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"I am using an open-source version"
"I use the open source model so it is free."
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
"We are using the open-source license."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"Splunk APM is expensive."
"Splunk has been fairly expensive, but it has been predictable."
"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."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The price of Slunk APM is less than some of its competitors."
"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."
"The solution's pricing is costly."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
8%
 

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: January 2025.
832,565 professionals have used our research since 2012.