Azure Monitor vs. Grafana

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Monitor
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure Monitor is designed to analyze and optimize the performance of web applications and infrastructure, including virtual machines (VMs), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Storage, and databases. Monitor Linux and Windows VMs and their health and dependencies—all on a single map.
$2.76
pay as you go per GB
Grafana
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Grafana is a data visualization tool developed by Grafana Labs in New York. It is available open source, managed (Grafana Cloud), or via an enterprise edition with enhanced features. Grafana has pluggable data source model and comes bundled with support for popular time series databases like Graphite. It also has built-in support for cloud monitoring vendors like Amazon Cloudwatch, Microsoft Azure and SQL databases like MySQL. Grafana can combine data from many places into a single dashboard.
$0
Pricing
Azure MonitorGrafana
Editions & Modules
Pay-As-You-Go
$2.76
per GB
100 GB per day
$219.5
2 per day
200 GB per day
$412.1
6 per day
300 GB per day
$604.8
0 per day
400 GB per day
$788.4
8 per day
500 GB per day
$968.8
0 per day
600 GB per day
$1,904
per day
700 GB per day
$3,718
40 per day
800 GB per day
$9,016
per day
Grafana Cloud - Pro
$8
per month up to 1 active user
Grafana Cloud - Free
Free
10k metrics + 50GB logs + 50GB traces up to 3 active users
Grafana Cloud - Advanced
Volume Discounts
custom data usage custom active users
Grafana - Enterprise Stack
Custom Pricing
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure MonitorGrafana
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure MonitorGrafana
Features
Azure MonitorGrafana
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Azure Monitor
-
Ratings
Grafana
8.2
7 Ratings
1% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings7.77 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings8.67 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings8.37 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Azure Monitor
-
Ratings
Grafana
7.9
6 Ratings
1% above category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings7.86 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings8.36 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings7.56 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings8.05 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Azure Monitor
-
Ratings
Grafana
8.4
6 Ratings
2% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.16 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings8.76 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings8.36 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings8.46 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.76 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Azure Monitor
-
Ratings
Grafana
8.5
6 Ratings
9% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings8.66 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings9.06 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.46 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings8.14 Ratings
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User Ratings
Azure MonitorGrafana
Likelihood to Recommend
7.6
(2 ratings)
9.4
(7 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.7
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
6.7
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure MonitorGrafana
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
We were able to get a single pane of glass for all our monitoring needs on Azure Monitor. However, we would like to see it improve to auto scale out and scale in depending on the load without human intervention. This can help us get to the No Ops model and rely on automated processes rather than manual intervention.
Read full review
Grafana Labs
Just about any organization with more than one server and more than one cluster as it scales very well. Configuration of the application takes time and finesse to fine tune to where the balance of load time and getting data quickly meets. The plugins add load time but fine tuning for the application to meet demand needs nailed down at implementation
Read full review
Pros
Microsoft
  • It supports all the Azure PAAS services.
  • Can monitor both infrastructure and application
Read full review
Grafana Labs
  • Alerting through many different medium as Slack, Email, Webhook etc
  • Beautiful and unlimited number of dashboards to view your metrics and tweak them as you please
  • Log aggregation and powerful Logql to filter and view your logs
  • Microservices monitoring
  • Large number of plugins and data sources to collect your metrics from almost anywhere
Read full review
Cons
Microsoft
  • Custom metrics
  • Ease of use
Read full review
Grafana Labs
  • There are some settings which we can't configure from UI (Web Console).
  • We've open[ed] up configuration files in command line text editors and manually do the settings e.g. LDAP/SSO configuration.
  • In terms of visualization, it's best, but it doesn't support log analysis otherwise it could destroy business of all other visualization tools.
Read full review
Usability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Grafana Labs
It is infinitely flexible. If you can imagine it, Grafana can almost certainly do it. Usability may be in the eye of the beholder however, as there is time needed to curate the experience and get the dashboards customized to how it makes sense to you. I know one thing they are working on are more templates, based on data sources
Read full review
Support Rating
Microsoft
I have not had to work with Azure Monitor support, so it is difficult to say how well the support team is. I assume that Azure has a well-versed team on the customer service side to assist with any issues customers may have. I may need them in the feature.
Read full review
Grafana Labs
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
While other tools have their own unique capability, Azure Monitor helps us monitor essential PAAS services that are not supported by other tools. So even though we have one other APM tool, we still rely on Azure Monitor for some of the special PAAS services, this is a huge advantage.
Read full review
Grafana Labs
Grafana blows Nagios out of the water when it comes to customization. The ability to feed almost any data source makes it very versatile and the cost is great.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • We are able to react quickly to the issues.
  • Debugging sessions are yielding quicker results to generate RCA.
Read full review
Grafana Labs
  • Grafana has replaced many higher priced tools
  • The integrations are seemless with multiple backends
  • Combining graphs and dashboards from multiple data sources is a game changer
Read full review
ScreenShots