Grafana vs OpenTelemetry
On the evidence we track, OpenTelemetry leads this comparison with a composite score of 69/100. 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.
Grafana
A comprehensive observability solution that integrates metrics, logs, and traces from multiple sources using OpenTelemetry-native standards, providing dashboards, alerting, and incident management capabilities for teams of any size.
OpenTelemetry
LeaderOpenTelemetry is an open-source framework that equips developers with SDKs, libraries, agents, and collector services to capture distributed traces, metrics, and logs from applications. It enables vendor-neutral observability by allowing teams to instrument code once and export telemetry data to any backend system without vendor lock-in.
Pricing
List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.
Grafana
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
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.
- Prometheus
Grafana
- Loki
- Elasticsearch
- InfluxDB
- Postgres
- Kubernetes
- AWS
- Tempo
- OpenTelemetry
- Azure Monitor
OpenTelemetry
Leader- Jaeger
- Zipkin
Grafana or OpenTelemetry: 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.