# Grafana Cloud

Grafana Cloud is an open-source observability and dashboarding platform, rated 4.5/5 on G2 from 200+ reviews. Profile: pricing, features, metrics/logs/traces, and how it compares to Datadog.

**Category:** Open-source observability and dashboarding platform  
**Vendor:** Grafana Labs  
**Founded:** 2014  
**HQ:** New York, New York, US  
**Website:** https://grafana.com/products/cloud/  


## About

Grafana Labs is a New York-based observability company founded in 2014 by Torkel Ödegaard, Anthony Woods, and Carl Bergquist. Grafana started as an open-source dashboard tool for Graphite and evolved into the leading visualization and observability platform. Grafana Cloud is the managed SaaS offering that combines Grafana dashboards with Loki (logs), Tempo (traces), Mimir (metrics), and k6 (load testing) into one unified observability stack. The platform integrates with Prometheus natively and is the de facto standard for Kubernetes and cloud-native monitoring. Grafana Labs raised $240M at a $6B valuation in 2022 and has over 3,000 customers including Bloomberg, Microsoft, and DoorDash.

## Ratings

| Source | Score | Reviews |
|---|---|---|
| G2 | 4.5/5 | ~200 |

## Funding

$240M+

| Round | Amount | Date | Lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series A | $12M | 2019 | Lead Edge Capital |
| Series B | $50M | 2020 | GIC |
| Series C | $150M | 2021 | Sequoia |
| Series D | $240M | 2022 | GIC |

## Viability

Very strong. $6B valuation, open-source community moat, industry-standard for cloud-native observability. Critical infrastructure for thousands of engineering teams worldwide.

## Pricing

Grafana Cloud charges on usage. Free: 50GB metrics, 50GB logs, 50GB traces. Pro: starts at $8/month with pay-as-you-go rates. Usage pricing: $0.009/GB for logs, $8/1000 active Prometheus series, $0.005/GB for traces. Cost is often 50-70% cheaper than equivalent Datadog spend for metric-heavy workloads.

| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | Small teams, dev environments, 50GB each |
| Pro | Pay-as-you-go from $8/mo | Production workloads, scalable pricing |
| Advanced | Custom | Large orgs, SLAs, dedicated support |

## What reviewers say

_~200 G2 reviews and extensive community discussion, 2025-2026_

**Praised:**
- Best-in-class Prometheus and Kubernetes dashboard ecosystem
- Loki log aggregation is significantly cheaper than Elastic/Datadog for log storage
- Free tier is genuinely usable for smaller teams and projects
- LGTM stack (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir) provides full observability without vendor lock-in

**Complaints:**
- Setup complexity is high compared to managed offerings like Datadog
- Dashboard creation has a learning curve for non-technical users
- Alert management is less polished than Datadog or PagerDuty

## Compliance

- **SOC 2:** Yes (Type II)
- **GDPR:** Yes
- **HIPAA:** Yes (Enterprise)
- **SSO:** Yes (Pro+)

## Integrations

- Prometheus
- Kubernetes
- AWS
- Azure
- GCP
- Datadog (migration)
- Elasticsearch
- InfluxDB
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- Jaeger
- Zipkin
- OpenTelemetry

## FAQs

### Is Grafana really open source?

Grafana the dashboarding tool is AGPLv3 open source. Loki, Tempo, and Mimir are also open source. Grafana Cloud is the managed SaaS offering. The LGTM stack can be fully self-hosted for free.

### How does Grafana Cloud compare to Datadog?

Grafana Cloud is typically 50-70% cheaper than Datadog for equivalent metric volume. Datadog has a better UX, stronger out-of-the-box integrations, and better ML anomaly detection. Grafana wins on cost, open standards, and community flexibility.


## Sources

- [Grafana Cloud website](https://grafana.com/products/cloud/): Product and pricing
- [G2 Grafana reviews](https://www.g2.com/products/grafana/reviews): User reviews