Datadog vs Grafana
On the evidence we track, Grafana leads this comparison with a composite score of 64/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.
Capabilities
Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for observability tools. “-” means undocumented, not absent.
What each one is
The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.
Datadog
A cloud-based observability and security service that integrates infrastructure monitoring, application performance tracking, log analysis, and real-user session monitoring. Designed to help teams detect issues, troubleshoot problems, and secure applications by providing a single view across metrics, traces, logs, and user interactions.
Grafana
LeaderA full-stack observability platform that ingests telemetry data from multiple sources and provides dashboards, alerting, incident management, and AI-assisted troubleshooting. Supports open standards including OpenTelemetry and can be deployed as a cloud service or self-hosted.
Pricing
List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.
Grafana
LeaderFree forever tier always available. Pro plans from $19/month + usage with volume discounts. Enterprise from $25,000/year with custom terms.
- FreeFree
- All Grafana Cloud services with limited usage
- Community support
- 14 days retention for metrics, logs, traces, profiles, and k6 performance tests
- ProFrom $19/month + usage with automatic volume discounts
- Everything in Free plan
- Pay as you go above free tier with volume discounts
- 8×5 email support
- 13 months retention for metrics; 30 days retention for logs, traces, profiles, k6 performance tests
- Adaptive Logs and Metrics cost optimization
- EnterpriseContact sales
- Premium support
- Custom retention policies
- Deployment flexibility (Public Cloud, Federal Cloud, or Bring Your Own Cloud)
- As low as $3 per 1k series for metrics at scale
- Custom pricing based on annual commit and volume
Platform & deployment
Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.
Integrations
What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.
Datadog
- Google Vertex AI
- Google Cloud Security Command Center
- Google Cloud SQL
- Google Cloud Run
- Dataflow
- OpenTelemetry
- OpenLineage
Grafana
Leader- Prometheus
- Loki
- Elasticsearch
- InfluxDB
- Postgres
- Kubernetes
- AWS
Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.