About
Overview
Grafana is the leading open-source platform for monitoring and observability. It allows you to query, visualize, and alert on metrics no matter where they are stored. It connects to data sources like Prometheus, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, and AWS CloudWatch.
Pricing & Free Tier
Free Tier (OSS): Yes. The open-source version is completely free to self-host.
Grafana Cloud Free: Yes. Includes 10,000 series for Prometheus metrics, 50GB logs, and 3 users.
Pro: $19/month plus usage. Adds advanced security and enterprise plugins.
How to Use
- If self-hosting, run
docker run -d -p 3000:3000 grafana/grafana-oss. - Log in (default admin/admin) and navigate to "Data Sources".
- Add your database (e.g., Prometheus or MySQL) and test the connection.
- Create a "New Dashboard" and write queries to build charts and graphs.
Important Notes
- Data Source Dependency: Grafana does not store the raw metrics itself; it only visualizes them. You must have a backend like Prometheus or InfluxDB running.
- Alerting: While the OSS version has alerting, Grafana Cloud offers more robust, high-availability alerting integrations.