Comparison

Grafana vs Thanos

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.

Machine formatsJSONMarkdownGraphQLor send Accept: application/json
Grafana64
Thanos57
Score
Vioscale score
Grafana64 / 100high · 76%
Thanos57 / 100medium · 54%
Pricing
Free tier
Grafana
Thanos
Model
Grafanafreemium
Price level
Grafanalow
Thanosfree
Transparent
Grafana
Thanos
Integrations
Count
Grafana7
Thanos8
Reliability
Status page
Grafana
Thanos
Adoption
Dependent repos
Grafana1,048
Thanos1,266
Github stars
Grafana76,431
Thanos14,188
Package downloads weekly
Grafana100,948
Thanos
Stackoverflow questions
Grafana14,000
Thanos
Activity
Commits last 30d
Grafana100
Thanos51
Release
Cadence days
Grafana
Thanos6
History
Grafana20 items
Thanos20 items
License
Spdx
GrafanaAGPL-3.0
Language
Primary
GrafanaTypeScript
ThanosGo
Market
Availability
Content
Faq
Grafana7 items
Thanos

Capabilities

Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for observability tools. “-” means undocumented, not absent.

Signals
Metrics
Grafana
Thanos
Log management
Grafana
Thanos-
Distributed tracing
Grafana
Thanos-
Application performance monitoring
Grafana
Thanos-
Real-user monitoring
Grafana
Thanos-
Response
Alerting
Grafana
Thanos-
On-call / incident management
Grafana
Thanos-
Insight
Dashboards
Grafana
Thanos
Standards
OpenTelemetry-native
Grafana
Thanos-
Deployment
Hosting
GrafanaCloud + self-hosted
ThanosSelf-hosted only

What each one is

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

Grafana

Leader

A 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.

Independently observed

Thanos

CNCF Incubating project extending Prometheus with global query view across multiple servers, unlimited retention via object storage, and downsampling capabilities.

Independently observed

Pricing

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

Grafana

Leader
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 ↗

Thanos

Open source
as of verify ↗

Platform & deployment

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

Platforms
Web
Grafana
Thanos
iOS
Grafana
Thanos
Android
Grafana
Thanos
CLI
Grafana
Thanos
Deployment
Cloud / SaaS
Grafana
Thanos
Self-hosted
Grafana
Thanos

Integrations

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

In common (1)
  • Prometheus

Grafana

Leader
7 total - 6 not shared
  • Loki
  • Elasticsearch
  • InfluxDB
  • Postgres
  • Kubernetes
  • AWS
Independently observed

Thanos

8 total - 7 not shared
  • Grafana
  • OpenTSDB
  • S3
  • GCP
  • Azure
  • Swift
  • Tencent COS
Independently observed

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