Top 11 Grafana Alternatives & Competitors [2026]
While Grafana began as a powerful data visualization tool, its evolution into a multi-tool observability platform — with Loki for logs, Tempo for traces, and Mimir for metrics—often means managing several moving parts.
Key challenges with Grafana include:
- Multiple Backends to Manage: For full-stack observability, Grafana relies on a suite of tools—Loki for logs, Tempo for traces, and Mimir for metrics. This composable setup means you must configure and maintain separate systems, which increases operational overhead.
- Handling High-Cardinality Data: Loki, designed for cost-effective log aggregation, intentionally keeps indexing low. However, when dealing with high-cardinality fields (like unique user IP addresses), it can result in thousands of log streams that slow down query performance.
- Fragmented Observability Experience: The need to integrate and correlate data from different backends often leads to a steeper learning curve and can make troubleshooting more time-consuming.
If these challenges sound familiar, you’re not alone. In this article, we explore the top 11 Grafana alternatives that aim to streamline observability and provide a more integrated, efficient experience.
Top 11 Grafana Alternatives
SigNoz
SigNoz is a cloud-native open-source observability platform that provides a unified alternative to the fragmented Grafana stack. It provides logs, metrics, and traces in an integrated UI backed by a single datastore for deeper correlation between signals.
SigNoz offers both cloud and self-hosted options. If you choose to self-host SigNoz, the maintenance is much easier. You can clone the GitHub repo to get started.
Why Engineering Teams Choose SigNoz over Grafana
We have helped many engineering teams migrate from Grafana to SigNoz, and here are the top reasons they choose SigNoz over Grafana:
Unified Platform vs. Fragmented Stack
Grafana’s "LGTM" stack requires you to manage four separate tools (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir). SigNoz provides an all-in-one solution where metrics, logs, and traces are stored in a single Columnar Database. You get a single pane of glass without the operational headache of gluing distinct systems together.Native Correlation that Actually Works
In Grafana, correlating a metric spike to logs often requires using "Split View" and ensuring your Prometheus labels exactly match your Loki labels—a fragile process that often breaks. With SigNoz, if you use OpenTelemetry for instrumentation, you can click on a latency spike and instantly drill down to the exact traces and logs because they share a unified schema in the same datastore.Query High-Cardinality Data Fast
SigNoz uses a columnar database that handles high-cardinality data natively. Unlike Loki, which often discourages high-cardinality labels, SigNoz allows you to efficiently filter and aggregate logs by any attribute (likecustomer_id).Simpler, Predictable Pricing
Grafana Cloud’s pricing can be complex with per-seat or per-host fees. SigNoz offers a transparent usage-based pricing model—you only pay for the data you ingest and retain. No hidden "user seat" taxes.Built on top of OpenTelemetry
SigNoz is built natively on OpenTelemetry, the industry standard. This ensures you are never locked into a proprietary vendor agent and can instrument your applications once to send data anywhere.Modern & Intuitive UI
Developers frequently praise SigNoz for its clean, modern interface. Features like the Query Builder allow anyone on the team to build complex queries without needing to master specialized languages like LogQL or PromQL.
We also did a pricing comparison of SigNoz with other popularity observability tools including Grafana. SigNoz can save up to 45% of your Grafana bill.
Kibana
Kibana is the visualization layer for the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana). It is primarily designed for log analysis and visualizing data stored in Elasticsearch.
Kibana is an integral component within the Elastic Stack (ELK), offering advanced visualization and analysis capabilities. Beats, which is also a part of the ELK Stack, is responsible for collecting and forwarding log data to Logstash for initial processing. Logstash, in turn, applies various data transformations and subsequently stores the processed data in Elasticsearch. Finally, Kibana provides a user-friendly interface for visualizing and analyzing the stored data, completing the comprehensive data pipeline.
While commonly used as a Grafana alternative, it is less flexible because it is tightly coupled with Elasticsearch. If you are already using ELK for logs, Kibana is the natural choice.
Key Strength: Deep integration with Elasticsearch for log analytics.
You can check out Kibana here.
Datadog
Datadog is a SaaS-based observability platform known for its extensive integration ecosystem (600+) and ease of use. Unlike Grafana, which often requires configuring data sources and dashbords manually, Datadog works out of the box for most common stacks.
It covers everything from infrastructure monitoring to log management and APM. While it is a paid tool and can get expensive at scale, it offers a more cohesive "product" experience compared to managing open-source Grafana components.
Key Strength: Use it if you want an all-in-one SaaS solution and budget is not a constraint.
You can check out Datadog here.
New Relic
New Relic is a veteran in the APM space and offers a full-stack observability platform. It is particularly strong in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and debugging.
While Grafana is often metrics-first, New Relic is code-first, providing deep visibility into function-level performance and stack traces. It has recently moved to a usage-based pricing model similar to consumption-based plans.
Key Strength: Deep code-level insights and strong APM capabilities.
You can check out New Relic here.
Splunk
Splunk is primarily known as a centralized log management and SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) platform. While Grafana (Loki) is efficient for log aggregation, Splunk offers far more advanced analytics and search capabilities on unstructured data.
It is heavily used in enterprise security contexts. However, it is a proprietary, heavy-weight solution that often comes with a significant price tag.
Key Strength: unparalleled for heavy unstructured log analysis and security use cases.
You can check out Splunk here.
Prometheus
Prometheus is the de-facto standard for monitoring in Kubernetes environments. It is a time-series database and alerting system that uses a pull-based model to collect metrics.
While Grafana is the visualization layer, Prometheus is often the engine underneath. You will almost always see them used together (Prometheus for data, Grafana for dashbaords).
Key Strength: Use it for standard Kubernetes and cloud-native metrics monitoring.
You can check out Prometheus here.
Dynatrace
Dynatrace is an AI-powered, all-in-one platform that focuses on automation and intelligence. It is well-regarded for its ability to automatically discover and map dependencies in complex microservices environments.
Unlike Grafana’s manual dashboard creation, Dynatrace emphasizes "Davis AI" to provide automatic root cause analysis. It is a premium enterprise tool.
Key Strength: AI-driven root cause analysis and automatic dependency mapping.
You can check out Dynatrace here.
AppDynamics
AppDynamics (part of Cisco) is another heavy hitter in the enterprise APM space. It excels at linking application performance directly to business outcomes (e.g., "how much revenue did we lose due to this checkout latency?").
It provides deep visibility into complex distributed applications and is widely used in legacy enterprise environments.
Key Strength: Business transaction monitoring and linking IT performance to business KPIs.
You can check out AppDynamics here.
VictoriaMetrics
VictoriaMetrics is a high-performance, open-source time-series database designed as a drop-in replacement for Prometheus. While it is primarily a datastore rather than a visualization tool (like Grafana), it acts as a highly efficient backend for Grafana dashboards.
It excels at handling high cardinality data and massive ingestion rates with lower resource usage than Prometheus. It is often used alongside Grafana to solve the scalability issues of standard Prometheus setups.
Key Strength: High-performance, scalable long-term storage for Prometheus monitoring data.
You can check out VictoriaMetrics here.
Metabase
Metabase is an open-source business intelligence tool that focuses on making data access easy for everyone. Unlike Grafana, which targets DevOps and engineering metrics, Metabase is designed for business analytics and visualizing data from SQL databases.
It allows non-technical users to create charts and dashboards using a simple GUI question builder, without needing to write SQL. If your goal is visualizing business data (e.g., sales, signups) rather than server CPU usage, Metabase is a better fit than Grafana.
Key Strength: Simplest open-source BI tool for visualizing business data from SQL databases.
You can check out Metabase here.
Zabbix
Zabbix is an enterprise-class open-source monitoring solution for networks and applications. It is a true veteran in the industry, offering a complete monitoring system including data collection, storage, alerting, and visualization in one package.
While its UI is considered less modern than Grafana's, Zabbix is exceptionally strong at infrastructure and network monitoring (via SNMP). It is a "batteries included" solution, unlike Grafana which typically needs to be paired with other data sources.
Key Strength: Comprehensive, all-in-one monitoring for traditional infrastructure and networks.
You can check out Zabbix here.
Top Grafana Alternatives at a Glance
| Tool | Best For | Type | Key Differentiator |
|---|---|---|---|
| SigNoz | Full-Stack Observability | Cloud / BYOC / Self-hosted | Unified Logs, Metrics, Traces with deeper correlation |
| Kibana | Log Analysis (ELK) | Open Source | Deep integration with Elasticsearch |
| Datadog | Cloud Monitoring | SaaS | Massive integration ecosystem, ease of use |
| New Relic | APM & Debugging | SaaS | Strong opinionated views for debugging |
| Splunk | Security & SIEM | Commercial | Handling massive unstructured log volume |
| Prometheus | Kubernetes Metrics | Open Source | Standard for cloud-native metrics |
| Dynatrace | Enterprise APM | SaaS | AI-driven root cause analysis |
| AppDynamics | Business Transactions | Commercial | Linking performance to business KPIs |
| VictoriaMetrics | Long-term Metrics | Open Source | High performance Prometheus alternative |
| Metabase | Business Intelligence | Open Source | Easy visualization for SQL databases |
| Zabbix | Infrastructure/Network | Open Source | Mature, all-in-one infra monitoring |
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is Grafana free?
Yes, Grafana has a free and open-source version (OSS) that you can self-host. However, they also offer a paid cloud version (Grafana Cloud) and an Enterprise version with additional features. Many open-source alternatives like SigNoz also offer both free self-hosted and paid cloud options.
2. Can SigNoz replace Grafana?
Yes, SigNoz can replace Grafana for observability. While Grafana is primarily a visualization tool that connects to limited datasources, SigNoz is a full-stack observability platform that includes storage, query, alerting, and visualization for metrics, logs, and traces. SigNoz simplifies the stack by removing the need to manage separate backends like Loki and Tempo.
3. What is the best open-source alternative to Grafana Dashboard?
If you are looking strictly for business intelligence dashboards for SQL data, Metabase or Superset are excellent alternatives. For observability and monitoring dashboards, SigNoz is the top contender as it provides out-of-the-box dashboards for APM and infrastructure alongside powerful custom dashboarding capabilities.
SigNoz can be one of the most well-balanced alternatives to Grafana. It is open-source like Grafana and also provides a SaaS-like experience in both its self-hosted and cloud versions. It uses a Columnar Database as a single datastore for all three types of signals, which empowers it to provide better correlation between signals. It is also much easier to self-host when compared to Grafana, which requires you to handle multiple tools.
4. Is Splunk better than Grafana?
Splunk is generally superior for security (SIEM) use cases and analyzing massive volumes of unstructured logs. Grafana excels at metric visualization. However, Splunk is proprietary and expensive. If you are looking for one-stop observability with powerful logs, metrics, and traces in a single platform, you might find SigNoz to be a great fit.
5. Is Grafana better than Datadog?
Grafana is ideal for teams wanting flexibility, while Datadog offers a zero-config SaaS experience at a premium price. If you want the unified experience of Datadog while following open standards like Grafana, SigNoz is an OpenTelemetry-native alternative worth considering.
6. Can Dynatrace replace Grafana?
Yes, Dynatrace is a complete observability platform. However, it is known for high licensing costs and complexity. If you want a modern, cost-effective alternative that provides full-stack observability (logs, metrics, and traces) natively on OpenTelemetry, SigNoz can be a future-proof choice for replacing Grafana.
Getting started with SigNoz
SigNoz Cloud is the easiest way to run SigNoz. Sign up for a free account and get 30 days of unlimited access to all features.
You can also install and self-host SigNoz yourself since it is open-source. With 24,000+ GitHub stars, open-source SigNoz is loved by developers. Find the instructions to self-host SigNoz.
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