Grafana can be used without paying: Open source to self-host; Grafana Cloud free tier, Pro from $19 a month. Check the vendor’s pricing page for current limits.

Is Grafana open source?

Yes. Grafana publishes its source code under the AGPL-3.0 license.

Which platforms does Grafana support?

Grafana is available on: Web, Self-hosted.

What is Grafana best for?

Monitoring dashboards for servers and applications. In our ranking of dashboard and data visualization tools it is number 7 of 9 with a score of 83.5.

What are the best alternatives to Grafana?

The highest-ranked alternatives on listme.name are Power BI, Tableau, Metabase, Data Studio.

Grafana Review, Pricing & Alternatives (2026)

83.5score

Ranked 7 of 9 in best dashboard and data visualization tools

Open source dashboards for metrics, logs and traces, built around monitoring. Its strength is operational data, and business reporting fits the BI tools above better.

Best for Monitoring dashboards for servers and applications

About Grafana

Grafana draws dashboards from time series and event data, and it is most often used to watch servers, applications and networks. The project README lists Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB and Postgres among its sources, and the software can be installed and run on your own servers.

Grafana Cloud has a free tier and paid plans with usage-based pricing, with the Pro plan listed from $19 a month plus usage. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0, so anyone who runs a modified version as a network service must make the modified source available. Compared with BI tools such as Power BI or Metabase, Grafana focuses on operational data and is less suited to business reporting.

Key features

Metrics, logs and traces
Prometheus and Loki data
Open source, AGPL-3.0
Grafana Cloud free tier
Self-hosted install

Strengths

Open source under AGPL-3.0 and self-hostable
Works with many metrics, logs and trace sources

Limits

Built around operational data, not business reporting
Cloud usage is billed above the free tier

Where Grafana ranks

List	Rank	Score	Best for
Best Dashboard and data visualization tools	7 of 9	83.5	Monitoring dashboards for servers and applications

Alternatives to Grafana

All 8 alternatives

Questions about Grafana

Is Grafana free?: Grafana can be used without paying: Open source to self-host; Grafana Cloud free tier, Pro from $19 a month. Check the vendor’s pricing page for current limits.
Is Grafana open source?: Yes. Grafana publishes its source code under the AGPL-3.0 license.
Which platforms does Grafana support?: Grafana is available on: Web, Self-hosted.
What is Grafana best for?: Monitoring dashboards for servers and applications. In our ranking of dashboard and data visualization tools it is number 7 of 9 with a score of 83.5.
What are the best alternatives to Grafana?: The highest-ranked alternatives on listme.name are Power BI, Tableau, Metabase, Data Studio.