Grafana¶

Summary

Grafana is the de facto open-source platform for querying, visualizing, and alerting on observability data from almost any source. Grafana Labs builds it in Go (backend) and TypeScript/React (frontend) under AGPL-3.0-only. It is the "G" in the LGTM stack (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir, plus Pyroscope for profiles). The current line is Grafana 13 (April 2026). It made Git Sync (bidirectional dashboards-as-code) and dynamic dashboards (schema v2) generally available, moved resources onto a Kubernetes-style API with unified storage, and brought the Grafana Assistant AI agent to self-managed installs. Telemetry collection is done by Grafana Alloy; Grafana Agent reached end of life on 2025-11-01.

Key Facts¶

Attribute	Detail
Latest Version	13.2.2 (2026-09-15); 13.2.0 released 2026-08-18
Supported lines	13.2, 13.1, 13.0, and 12.4 (extended, last 12.x minor); see Reference
Release cadence	Major yearly (April–May), minor every other month, monthly patches; each minor is supported for 9 months (last minor of a major gets 15)
License	AGPL-3.0-only since Grafana 8.0 (April 2021; Apache-2.0 before). SDK packages, Alloy, and the Helm charts are Apache-2.0
Governance	Single-vendor open source, owned by Grafana Labs (not a CNCF project)
Company	Grafana Labs, founded 2014 (as Raintank), HQ New York; $400M+ ARR and 7,000+ customers (2025-09); reportedly raising at ~$9B valuation (2026-02)
Creator	Torkel Ödegaard (first release January 2014, forked from the Kibana 3 frontend)
Repository	github.com/grafana/grafana: 73.1k stars and 13.7k forks as of 2026-04
Languages	TypeScript and Go
Collector	Grafana Alloy 1.20.0 (2026-09-25), Apache-2.0
Install path	`grafana/grafana` image, `apt.grafana.com` packages, or the `grafana-community/grafana` Helm chart; managed via Grafana Cloud, Amazon Managed Grafana, or Azure Managed Grafana
Pricing	OSS free; Grafana Cloud Free ($0), Pro ($19/month + usage), Enterprise (from ~$25k/year)

Architecture at a Glance¶

Grafana sits between users and data sources: it stores only configuration and forwards every query to the backend that owns the data. The diagram shows the main parts; more detail is in Explanation.

flowchart LR
    Alloy["Grafana Alloy<br/>(collector)"] --> Backends
    subgraph Backends["Data sources"]
        Mimir["Mimir / Prometheus"]
        Loki["Loki"]
        Tempo["Tempo"]
        Pyro["Pyroscope"]
        Other["SQL, CloudWatch,<br/>Elasticsearch, 100+ more"]
    end
    subgraph GF["Grafana server"]
        Q["Query service<br/>+ plugins (gRPC)"]
        AL["Alerting engine"]
        US["Unified storage<br/>/apis resources"]
    end
    Git["Git repo<br/>(Git Sync)"] <--> US
    US --> DB[("MySQL / PostgreSQL<br/>(SQLite for dev)")]
    Q --> Backends
    AL --> Q
    Users["Browser / gcx / Terraform"] --> GF

What Changed in 2025–2026¶

When	Change
2025-03	Grafana OnCall OSS enters maintenance mode (archived 2026-03-24; replacement is Grafana Cloud IRM)
2025-05	Grafana 12.0: AngularJS removed; Git Sync, dashboard schema v2, and dynamic dashboards introduced as experimental; Drilldown apps GA; SQL expressions; alert `Recovering` state
2025-07	Grafana 12.1: API key endpoints removed (service accounts only)
2025-10	Grafana Assistant GA in Grafana Cloud; Assistant Investigations preview
2025-11	Grafana Agent end of life (2025-11-01); critical CVE-2025-41115 (Enterprise SCIM) patched
2026-01/03	Grafana, Loki (OSS), and Tempo Helm charts move to grafana-community/helm-charts
2026-04	Grafana 13.0 (GrafanaCON): Git Sync and dynamic dashboards GA, Grafana Advisor GA, Assistant on-prem, unified storage migration, `/api` deprecated in favour of `/apis`, `grafana-cli`/`grafana-server` removed. 13.0.0 was withdrawn; use 13.0.1+
2026-06	Grafana 13.1: Git Sync verified commits and folderless sync, quick filters, Assistant pre-installed in Enterprise; `grafanactl` archived in favour of `gcx`
2026-07	"AI Week": Assistant Investigations, Automations, Workspace, Cloud MCP server, `gcx`, Agent Observability GA
2026-08	Grafana 13.2: saved queries GA, Git Sync for GitHub Enterprise plus GitLab/Bitbucket webhooks, scripted dashboards deprecated

Evaluation¶

Why It Stands Out¶

Vendor-neutral and open-standards-first (Prometheus, OpenTelemetry), with the broadest data-source catalogue of any open tool (100+ data sources through plugins). It can put metrics, logs, traces, and profiles into one UI with click-through correlation. No other open-source tool combines this breadth with an active managed offering.

When It Fits¶

You need dashboards and alerting over heterogeneous sources (Prometheus plus SQL plus cloud monitoring).
You want to avoid backend lock-in: visualization is portable, and data stays in your stores.
You run or plan the LGTM stack, or Grafana Cloud.
You want dashboards and alerts as code reviewed in Git (Git Sync, gcx, Terraform).

It fits less well when you want a single-vendor, zero-ops APM product with automatic instrumentation and no data-source setup (Datadog, New Relic), or a log-search-first workflow (Kibana/OpenSearch Dashboards).

Pros and Cons¶

Pros	Cons
Unmatched data-source flexibility	Self-hosting the full LGTM stack is operationally heavy
Strong visualization engine (dynamic dashboards, dozens of panel types)	AGPL-3.0 can create compliance friction for some organizations
Large community and plugin catalogue	Unified alerting has a steep learning curve
Open standards (Prometheus, OTel native)	Default SQLite backend is dev-only; HA needs MySQL/PostgreSQL
Generous Grafana Cloud free tier	Fine-grained RBAC, SAML, reporting, auditing are Enterprise/Cloud-only
Cross-signal correlation (metrics, logs, traces, profiles)	Dashboard sprawl is a real governance problem at scale
First-class GitOps since 13.0 (Git Sync)	Fast release pace with a breaking major every year (Angular in 12, CLI and renderer in 13)

Common Use Cases¶

Infrastructure and Kubernetes monitoring
Application performance monitoring with Tempo and OpenTelemetry
Log exploration with Loki
Business and SQL dashboards (PostgreSQL, MySQL, BigQuery, Snowflake)
IoT and industrial telemetry
Security dashboards (Loki or Elasticsearch based)
AI/LLM and agent observability (Grafana Cloud AI Observability, Agent Observability)

Licensing and Commercial Use¶

Core Grafana: AGPL-3.0-only since April 2021. Running unmodified Grafana, even commercially, carries no copyleft obligations; if you modify it and offer it to users over a network, you must publish the modifications under AGPL.
Apache-2.0 parts: @grafana/data, @grafana/ui, @grafana/runtime, schemas and kinds, plugin SDKs, Alloy, Helm charts, Terraform provider.
Grafana Enterprise: commercial license on top of the same codebase (RBAC, SAML, reporting, auditing, enterprise plugins, Assistant pre-installed).
Grafana Cloud: Free, Pro ($19/month platform fee + usage, e.g. ~$6.50 per 1k metric series), Enterprise (from ~$25k/year). Details and caveats are in Reference.
Managed alternatives: Amazon Managed Grafana (per-user pricing), Azure Managed Grafana.

Ecosystem and Compatibility¶

Native backends: Prometheus, Mimir, Loki, Tempo, Pyroscope.
First-party data sources: Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, InfluxDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Monitoring, BigQuery, Jaeger, Zipkin, Graphite, and more; Enterprise adds Snowflake, Splunk, Datadog, ServiceNow, and others.
Collection: Grafana Alloy (OTel Collector distribution; replaces Grafana Agent) and Beyla/OBI for eBPF auto-instrumentation.
As code: Git Sync, gcx, Foundation SDK, file provisioning, Terraform provider, Ansible collection, Grafana Operator, Crossplane.
APIs: legacy REST /api (deprecated in 13.0) and Kubernetes-style /apis; backend plugins over gRPC.
Runs on: Linux (Debian/Ubuntu, RHEL/Fedora, SUSE), macOS, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes.
Database: SQLite (default, dev only), MySQL 8.0+, PostgreSQL 12+.
Sizing: official small tier is 2 cores and 2–4 GB RAM (fewer than 25 concurrent users); see Reference.

Alternatives¶

Alternative	Positioning vs Grafana
Datadog	All-in-one SaaS with faster time to value, much higher cost at scale
Kibana / OpenSearch Dashboards	Stronger for log-search-centric ELK workflows
New Relic	SaaS APM with a generous free tier
SigNoz	Open-source, OpenTelemetry-native all-in-one (ClickHouse)
OpenObserve	Open-source all-in-one with built-in UI
Coroot	eBPF-based, zero-instrumentation observability with built-in UI
Perses	CNCF sandbox dashboards-as-code project for Prometheus-style data
Apache Superset	BI-focused, less real-time
Splunk Observability	Enterprise suite, expensive

Migration and Lock-in¶

Low lock-in on the visualization layer: dashboards are JSON or v2 resources; data sources are external and swappable.
Moderate lock-in with the full LGTM stack: LogQL and TraceQL are Grafana-specific, though storage uses open formats (Prometheus TSDB blocks, Parquet) in your own object storage, and ingestion is OTLP/Prometheus remote-write.
Moving in: Grafana documents migrations from Datadog, New Relic, and Splunk to Grafana Cloud, plus a Cloud Migration Assistant (GA in 12.0) from self-managed to Cloud.
Moving out: Git Sync and gcx resources pull export resources as files; Terraform state documents everything else.

Community Health and Support¶

Very active repository: patch releases for four supported lines every few weeks, frequent +security releases, and contributors across Grafana Labs and the community.
Community: community.grafana.com, Grafana Slack, GrafanaCON (annual, where majors ship) and ObservabilityCON.
Commercial support: Grafana Cloud Pro (8x5 email) and Enterprise SLAs.
Adoption signal: Grafana Labs reports 7,000+ paying customers (2025-09) and a Leader position in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms (2024).

Topic Map¶

How-to Guides: install, production configuration, HA, authentication, hardening, Git Sync and gcx, provisioning, Terraform, Alloy pipelines, API recipes, upgrades, troubleshooting.
Reference: versions and support windows, editions and pricing, licensing, requirements, ports, grafana.ini keys, CLI, APIs, roles, alert states, Git Sync limits, metrics, Helm charts, deprecations, advisories, hardening checklist.
Explanation: architecture, request lifecycle, plugins, app platform and unified storage, schema v2, Git Sync design, alerting, LGTM integration, Alloy, AI features, security model, history.

LGTM vs Victoria Stack
Observability Stacks Comparison
Observability comparisons index
LGTM Stack: Loki, Tempo, Mimir, and Pyroscope internals, deployment, and benchmarks
OpenTelemetry: the instrumentation standard Alloy implements
OpenTelemetry Collector: the upstream collector Alloy is a distribution of
VictoriaMetrics: alternative metrics backend commonly used with Grafana
Observability 2.0: the wide-events critique of the three-pillars model
eBPF Developer Tutorial: the instrumentation layer behind Beyla/OBI-style auto-instrumentation
MySQL: supported Grafana backend database and data source

Sources¶

URL	Kind	Used for
https://github.com/grafana/grafana	Repository	Code, license
https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md	Changelog	Versions, dates, breaking changes
https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/main/LICENSING.md	License map	AGPL vs Apache paths
https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/	Docs	General reference
https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/whatsnew/whats-new-in-v13-0/	Release notes	Grafana 13 features
https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/upgrade-guide/upgrade-v13.0/	Upgrade guide	13.0 breaking changes, withdrawn 13.0.0
https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/upgrade-guide/when-to-upgrade/	Docs	Release cadence and support policy
https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/setup-grafana/installation/	Docs	Requirements and databases
https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/as-code/observability-as-code/git-sync/	Docs	Git Sync
https://grafana.com/whats-new/2026-04-20-git-sync-for-grafana-dashboards-and-folders-now-generally-available/	What's new	Git Sync GA
https://grafana.com/whats-new/2026-04-08-dynamic-dashboards-is-now-generally-available/	What's new	Dynamic dashboards GA
https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/alerting/	Docs	Alerting
https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/administration/provisioning/	Docs	Provisioning
https://grafana.com/developers/plugin-tools/	Docs	Plugin development
https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/	Docs	Alloy
https://github.com/grafana/alloy/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md	Changelog	Alloy versions
https://github.com/grafana/agent	Repository	Agent EOL notice
https://github.com/grafana/gcx	Repository	`gcx` CLI
https://github.com/grafana-community/helm-charts	Repository	Helm charts (new home)
https://github.com/grafana/terraform-provider-grafana	Repository	Terraform provider
https://grafana.com/pricing/	Pricing	Grafana Cloud plans
https://monitoringcost.com/grafana-cloud-pricing	Third-party	2026 per-unit prices (cross-check)
https://grafana.com/press/2025/10/08/grafana-labs-revolutionizes-ai-powered-observability-with-ga-of-grafana-assistant-and-introduces-assistant-investigations/	Press	Assistant GA
https://grafana.com/press/2026/07/27/grafana-labs-ships-six-tools-that-power-agentic-operations-from-planning-to-production/	Press	AI Week releases
https://grafana.com/press/2025/09/30/grafana-labs-surpasses-400m-arr-and-7000-customers-gains-new-investors-to-accelerate-global-expansion/	Press	ARR and customers
https://siliconangle.com/2026/02/13/grafana-labs-reportedly-raising-funding-9b-valuation/	News	Reported valuation
https://grafana.com/blog/2021/04/20/grafana-loki-tempo-relicensing-to-agplv3/	Blog	AGPL relicensing
https://grafana.com/blog/grafana-enterprise-security-update-critical-severity-security-fix-for-cve-2025-41115/	Advisory	CVE-2025-41115
https://github.com/grafana/oncall	Repository	OnCall OSS archive notice
https://community.grafana.com/	Forum	Community
https://play.grafana.org/	Demo	Live demo instance

Questions¶

Open Questions¶

What exactly does Grafana Assistant send to Grafana Cloud when used from a self-managed (on-prem) instance, and which LLM vendors back it? (Grafana Labs had not disclosed the model vendor as of 2026-04.) See Explanation.
When will the legacy /api endpoints be removed? 13.0 only deprecated them; a future major will announce removal. See Reference.
Will Git Sync limits (10 connections, ~1,000 resources per connection) rise as promised toward ~100 connections per stack? See Reference.
Is Sift still a separate product, or fully folded into Assistant Investigations?
Current Grafana Cloud per-unit prices should be re-checked directly on grafana.com/pricing (not fetchable during the 2026-09 review).