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Hosted metrics, logs, traces and dashboards · by Grafana Labs

Grafana Cloud

Hosted Grafana with managed Prometheus-style metrics, Loki logs, Tempo traces and profiles, built on open-source projects, with a permanent free tier and usage pricing.

Visit grafana.com ↗ Alternatives Free tier Open source Self-hostable EU region
Grafana Cloud homepage
§1

Overview

Grafana Cloud is the hosted version of the Grafana observability stack. Dashboards and alerting sit on top of managed backends for metrics (Mimir, Prometheus-compatible), logs (Loki), traces (Tempo) and continuous profiles (Pyroscope), plus k6 load testing, synthetic monitoring, frontend RUM, Kubernetes monitoring and an incident and on-call module.

The free tier includes every service with capped usage and 14 days of retention, which is enough for a homelab, a side project or evaluating the stack. Pro charges a $19 monthly platform fee, includes a base allowance per signal, and then bills by active metric series, GB of logs and traces, and host hours for Kubernetes. Retention rises to 13 months for metrics and 30 days for the rest.

Because everything is built on open-source projects and OpenTelemetry, you can move between self-hosted and cloud. Adaptive Metrics and Adaptive Logs tools find unused series and log patterns to drop, which helps keep usage billing under control.

§2

Pricing and plans

Free tier · no card

All Grafana Cloud services with usage limits (for example 50 GB of traces a month), community support and 14-day retention for metrics, logs, traces and profiles.

At the limit Stops at the limit Data past the free ingestion limits is discarded; the free plan is never billed.

Plan Price What you get
Free $0 All services with usage limits, 14-day retention, community support
Pro $19/mo + usage 10k metric series and 50 GB each of logs, traces and profiles included, then pay as you go; 13-month metrics retention, 8x5 email support
Enterprise From $25,000/yr commit Custom retention, premium support, BYOC or Federal Cloud

Metrics beyond the included 10k active series cost $6.50 per 1k series, falling to $5.90 and $5.50 at higher volumes. Traces are billed per GB across process, write and retain components; Kubernetes Monitoring is billed per host hour ($0.0007 shown) beyond an included allowance. The pricing page headline says Grafana is changing its pricing model ('send more, charge more is broken'); check the calculator for the current per-GB log rates, which were not shown as a single figure. The underlying Grafana, Loki, Tempo, Mimir and Pyroscope projects are AGPL-licensed and can be self-hosted.

Source: grafana.com/pricing/ · prices as published, excluding tax.

§3

What it does

Managed Prometheus metrics
Mimir-backed metrics with PromQL; 10k active series included on Pro, 13-month retention.
Logs with Loki
Label-indexed log storage with 50 GB a month included on Pro and 30-day retention.
Traces and profiles
Tempo tracing and Pyroscope continuous profiling, each with 50 GB a month included.
Kubernetes and app observability
Prebuilt views for clusters and OpenTelemetry-instrumented services, billed by host hour when enabled.
Adaptive Telemetry
Recommends aggregating or dropping unused metrics and log patterns to cut billable volume.
Grafana Assistant
AI assistant for queries, dashboards and incident investigations.
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Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Permanent free tier with all services and 14-day retention.
  • Built on open-source projects, so the same dashboards and queries work self-hosted.
  • OpenTelemetry and Prometheus native, with no proprietary agent required.
  • Volume discounts are applied automatically as usage grows.

Limitations

  • Free tier retention is 14 days for all signals.
  • Pro billing spans several meters (active series, GB per signal, host hours), which takes effort to forecast.
  • Enterprise requires a $25,000 annual commitment.
  • No public status pages; uptime checks come through synthetic monitoring.
§5

Who it suits

Good for

  • Teams already using Prometheus and Grafana
  • Kubernetes clusters that need metrics, logs and traces together
  • Side projects that fit in the free tier

Look elsewhere if

  • Developers who only want simple error tracking
  • Teams that want one flat price without usage meters
§6

Pricing history

  • Grafana Kubernetes Monitoring drops telemetry credits for new plans

    Plans started after 2026-02-13 are billed only on active host and container hours with no telemetry credits; plans started between 2024-09-17 and 2026-02-13 keep their credits. Source ↗

§7

Alternatives to Grafana Cloud

Tool From Free option Stages
Rollbar Error tracking and session replay
$15.83/mo Free tier
Checkly Synthetic and uptime monitoring as code
$24/mo Free tier
Sentry Error tracking and application monitoring
$26/mo Free tier
New Relic Full-stack observability platform
$10/mo Free tier
SigNoz Open-source OpenTelemetry APM, logs and metrics
$49/mo Free tier
Amazon CloudWatch AWS-native metrics, logs, alarms and tracing
Usage-based Free tier

All monitoring, uptime and error tracking →

§8

Questions

Is Grafana Cloud free?

Yes, the free tier includes all services with usage limits and 14 days of retention, with no charge.

How much does Grafana Cloud Pro cost?

A $19 monthly platform fee plus usage above the included amounts, such as $6.50 per 1,000 metric series beyond 10,000.

Can I self-host instead of using Grafana Cloud?

Yes, Grafana, Loki, Tempo, Mimir and Pyroscope are open source and can be run yourself.

How long does Grafana Cloud keep data?

14 days on Free; on Pro, 13 months for metrics and 30 days for logs, traces and profiles.

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