vioscaleAI
Comparison

EMQX vs Grafana

No clear leader: EMQX (64.4) and Grafana (63.5) are within the 5-point margin; treat as a tie. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.

EMQX full profile →Grafana full profile →
Machine formatsMarkdownJSONGraphQLAll open, no key required.
EMQX64
Grafana64
Score
vioscaleAI score
EMQX64 / 100high · 75%
Grafana64 / 100high · 76%
Pricing
Free tier
EMQX✓
Grafana✓
Model
EMQXfreemium
Grafanafreemium
Price level
EMQXhigh
Grafanalow
Starting price
EMQX$234
Grafana–
Transparent
EMQX✓
Grafana✗
Integrations
Count
EMQX50
Grafana5
Security
Certifications
Disclosure policy
EMQX✓
Grafana✓
Fedramp
EMQX–
Grafana✓
Gdpr
EMQX✓
Grafana✓
Hipaa
EMQX✓
Grafana–
Iso27001
EMQX✓
Grafana✓
Pci
EMQX–
Grafana✓
Scorecard
EMQX–
Grafana6.8
Soc2
EMQX✓
Grafana✓
Trust center
Vulnerabilities
Reliability
Sla pct
EMQX99.99
Grafana–
Status page
EMQX–
Grafana✓
Adoption
Dependent repos
EMQX–
Grafana1,048
Github stars
EMQX–
Grafana76,648
Package downloads weekly
EMQX–
Grafana100,948
Stackoverflow questions
EMQX–
Grafana14,000
Activity
Commits last 30d
EMQX–
Grafana100
Release
History
EMQX–
Grafana20 items
License
Spdx
EMQX–
GrafanaAGPL-3.0
Language
Primary
EMQX–
GrafanaTypeScript
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
EMQX6 items
Grafana8 items

Features

The capabilities each product documents. These tools do not share a category taxonomy, so this aligns what each vendor states rather than a normalised feature set.

Declared feature comparison
FeatureEMQXGrafana
Alerting-✓
Apm-✓
Dashboards-✓
Delivery guaranteeexactly-once-
Global edge network✓-
Hosting-both
Logs-✓
Metrics-✓
Mqtt support✓-
Offline reconnect catchup✓-
On call-✓
Otel native-✓
Pricing modelconnections-metered-
Rum-✓
Scaling modelnative-cluster-
Self hostable✓-
Tracing-✓

What each one is

The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.

EMQX

An enterprise MQTT broker and platform that enables scalable, real-time data collection and routing from IoT devices across edge, cloud, and on-premises deployments. It provides native integrations with AI platforms, databases, and cloud services, along with advanced features like rule engines and flexible authentication.

Independently observed

Grafana

A cloud-based observability platform that unifies metrics, logs, traces, and dashboards for monitoring applications, infrastructure, and AI systems. Built on open standards like OpenTelemetry, it includes cost optimization tools, alerting, and incident response features.

Independently observed

Pricing

List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.

EMQX

from $234/moHybridFree tier14-day trial

From free tier to $234/month managed, or custom enterprise pricing

  • ServerlessFree
    • Up to 1000 connections
    • TLS/SSL encryption
    • Basic monitoring & alerts
    • 8/5 support
  • Dedicated Flex$234/month with included traffic allowance
    • Dedicated isolated cluster
    • VPC peering & private link
    • 40+ integrations
    • 99.99% uptime SLA
    • 24/7 premium support
  • BYOCContact sales
    • Deployed in your VPC
    • Custom data plane & control plane
    • Managed upgrades and observability
    • Compliance tailored to your needs
  • EnterpriseContact sales
    • Deploy anywhere (on-prem, edge, cloud)
    • Custom plugins & extensions
    • Professional services
    • Priority feature requests
as of verify ↗

Grafana

from $0.05/moHybridFree tier

Free 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
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.

Platforms
Web
EMQX✓
Grafana✓
iOS
EMQX✗
Grafana✓
Android
EMQX✗
Grafana✓
CLI
EMQX✓
Grafana✓
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
EMQX✓
Grafana✓
Self-hosted
EMQX✓
Grafana✗
On-premise
EMQX✓
Grafana✗
Hybrid
EMQX✓
Grafana✗

Integrations

What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.

In common (2)
  • AWS
  • InfluxDB

EMQX

25 total - 23 not shared
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Cloud
  • Oracle Cloud
  • OpenAI
  • Anthropic
  • Google Gemini
  • ClickHouse
  • Snowflake
  • Kafka
  • Pulsar
  • RabbitMQ
  • MySQL
  • PostgreSQL
  • MongoDB
  • TDengine
  • TimescaleDB
  • BigQuery
  • S3
  • Azure Blob
  • Confluent Cloud
  • Webhook
  • Amazon S3
  • Azure Blob Storage
Independently observed

Grafana

9 total - 7 not shared
  • Prometheus
  • Loki
  • Elasticsearch
  • Postgres
  • Kubernetes
  • Tempo
  • OpenTelemetry
Independently observed
Still deciding?

EMQX or Grafana: which one depends on you

A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.

Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works

Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.