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Grafana vs OpenObserve
OpenObserve is an open-source observability stack for petabyte scale, while Grafana provides a managed SaaS with AI-driven workflows and cost optimization.
GrafanaOpen-source dashboards and observability.jpg?auto=compress&fit=max&w=96)
OpenObserveOpen source observability built for petabyte scaleWhich to pick
Pick Grafana if you want…
- Open-standard full-stack observability
- A free plan to start with
- Integrations with Slack (on Grafana's list, not OpenObserve's)
Pick OpenObserve if you want…
- Unified, petabyte-scale observability
- Integrations with Datadog Agent, AWS or Google Cloud (on OpenObserve's list, not Grafana's)
Side by side
- What it is
- Grafana:Grafana Cloud is an open-source-based observability platform that unifies metrics, logs, traces, profiles and business data.
- OpenObserve:OpenObserve is an open-source observability platform for logs, metrics and traces at petabyte scale.
- Best for
- Grafana:Open-standard full-stack observability
- OpenObserve:Unified, petabyte-scale observability
- Who it’s for
- Grafana:Developers, SREs and teams needing full-stack observability and cost-optimized telemetry.
- OpenObserve:Engineering teams needing high-performance, cost-effective observability.
- Pricing
- Grafana:Freemium
- OpenObserve:Paid
- Plans
- Grafana:Free $0 · Pro $19 per month + usage · Enterprise $25,000 per year spend commit
- OpenObserve:OpenObserve Cloud $0.50/GB per GB ingest
- Open source
- Grafana:Yes, 77,033 GitHub stars
- OpenObserve:Yes
- Works with
- Grafana:OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Kubernetes, Slack
- OpenObserve:OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Datadog Agent, Kubernetes, AWS, Google Cloud, Azure
Grafana features
- AI Assistant. Ask natural-language questions, build dashboards and run investigations directly from Grafana, Slack or the terminal.
- Adaptive Telemetry. Automatically identifies low-value data and aggregates it, cutting telemetry spend by up to 80%.
- Full-stack observability. Unified view of metrics, logs, traces, profiles and synthetic monitoring on a single map.
- OpenTelemetry-native. Native support for OpenTelemetry and Prometheus with hundreds of plugins and integrations.
- Cost Management. Pay-as-you-go pricing with volume-based discounts and a free tier that includes all services.
- Compliance & Security. FedRAMP, NIST-100, PCI-DSS, GDPR and SOC-2 certifications for enterprise use.
OpenObserve features
- Unified observability stack. Collect, correlate and view logs, metrics, traces and more in a single platform.
- Columnar Parquet storage. Rust-based storage engine provides 140× storage efficiency and 30× compute efficiency.
- Auto-correlation engine. Analyzes millions of signals per second to automatically link related events.
- AI SRE agent. Continuously triages incidents, finds root cause and drafts post-mortems.
- AI assistant. Answers natural-language queries across all telemetry without writing queries.
- LLM observability. Tracks prompts, completions, token usage and cost for LLM applications.
- Kubernetes integration. One-click collector deploys logs, metrics, events and zero-code traces for clusters.
- OpenTelemetry-native ingestion. Supports OpenTelemetry, Prometheus and Datadog agents for drop-in migration.
Grafana vs OpenObserve FAQ
Is Grafana or OpenObserve free?+
Grafana has a free plan and paid plans. OpenObserve is paid.
Is Grafana or OpenObserve open source?+
Yes, both are open source: Grafana (grafana/grafana on GitHub, AGPL-3.0 license) and OpenObserve.
Do Grafana and OpenObserve integrate with the same tools?+
Partly. Both list OpenTelemetry, Prometheus and Kubernetes. Grafana also lists Slack; OpenObserve also lists Datadog Agent, AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.
On DevHunt
OpenObserve
39 upvotes · Launched on DevHunt on Apr 14, 2026
Based on each tool's website and DevHunt data. Details may change; check the official sites.