Who is Grafana best for?

Grafana is built for Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) and DevOps engineers managing on-call rotations, Platform engineering teams operating on Grafana Cloud or Prometheus-based observability stacks, Engineering organizations migrating away from PagerDuty or Opsgenie seeking cost savings, Distributed or remote-first engineering teams needing timezone-aware scheduling. Common use cases include On-call schedule management for distributed engineering teams; Alert routing and escalation for cloud-native infrastructure incidents; Replacing PagerDuty or Opsgenie within existing Grafana Cloud deployments.

How is Grafana priced?

Free tier: up to 3 active IRM users/month at no cost (community support only). Pro tier: $20/active IRM user/month on-demand, plus a $19/month platform fee (includes 3 active users and 8x5 email support). Enterprise tier: custom annual pricing with a minimum commit of $25,000/year, including premium support, Observability Architect access, and deployment flexibility (Public Cloud, Federal Cloud, or Bring Your Own Cloud). An 'active IRM user' is defined as a user included in OnCall schedules or escalation chains, or who performs alert group or OnCall configuration actions during the billing month.

What are the alternatives to Grafana?

Common Incident Management & On-Call alternatives to Grafana include Rootly, incident.io, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, FireHydrant. See the full comparison hub at /verticals/incident-management-and-on-call/compare.

What do users praise about Grafana?

Users frequently praise: Native integration with Grafana observability stack (dashboards, logs, traces); Cost savings versus PagerDuty and other proprietary tools; Flexible and customizable escalation chains; Strong Slack and ChatOps integration; Simple on-call scheduling with rotation and shift swap support; Open-source transparency and community-driven development; Automatic alert grouping reduces noise during incidents; Wide range of monitoring source integrations (Prometheus, Zabbix, Datadog, etc.).

What are common complaints about Grafana?

Frequently cited limitations: OSS archival (March 2026) forced disruptive migration to paid Grafana Cloud; IRM not available as standalone — requires full Grafana Cloud subscription; Costs can escalate quickly with high data ingestion or large user counts; Steep learning curve for advanced alert routing and template configuration; Initial setup complexity for new users unfamiliar with the Grafana ecosystem; Lack of spend/ingestion caps on pay-as-you-go billing model.

When was Grafana founded and where?

Grafana was founded in 2014, headquartered in New York, NY, USA by Raj Dutt, Torkel Ödegaard, Anthony Woods.

Grafana reports 1500-2000 employees, 5,000+ paying customers; 20M+ Grafana us customers, ~$400M (Sep 2024) ARR.

AI visibility report

Grafana ranks #6 in Incident Management & On-Call AI search.

Outside the top three on 23 of the 25 prompts buyers actually ask.

Rootly is cited on 20 of those losses.

25 prompts

6 platforms

Updated Sep 27, 2026 - refreshed weekly

Track Grafana daily

14-day free trial. No card required. Setup comes pre-filled for Grafana.

Also benchmarked

Grafana appears in another vertical

Observability & Monitoring

Track Grafana across these prompts daily.

Start your 14-day trial

5percent

Presence Rate

Low presence

#6 among 11 vendors · still absent from 94.7% of tracked prompt responses

Top-3 citations across 150 prompt × platform pairs

#6of 11

Peer Ranking

#1#11

Mid-packin Incident Management & On-Call

Key Metrics

Presence Rate

5.3%

Share of Voice

2.6%

Avg Position

#4.6

Docs Presence

2.0%

Blog Presence

0.0%

Brand Mentions

1.3%

Platform Breakdown

ChatGPT

16%4/25 prompts

Perplexity

Research dossierCapabilities, use cases, sources, reviews, pricing, and FAQ

Overview

Grafana OnCall, now delivered as part of Grafana Cloud IRM, is an on-call management and incident response product built by Grafana Labs. Originally developed by Amixr Inc. (founded 2018) and acquired by Grafana Labs in 2021, it launched on Grafana Cloud in late 2021 and was open-sourced in 2022. The OSS edition was archived in March 2026, with active development consolidated into Grafana Cloud IRM. The product bundles on-call scheduling, escalation chain management, multi-channel notifications, and incident response workflows into the Grafana Cloud observability platform. It is positioned as a developer-first, cost-effective alternative to tools like PagerDuty, particularly for teams already using Grafana dashboards, Prometheus, Loki, or Tempo for monitoring. Grafana Labs serves 5,000+ paying customers and reports 20+ million Grafana users globally.

AI visibility report

Grafana ranks #6 in Incident Management & On-Call AI search.

Outside the top three on 23 of the 25 prompts buyers actually ask.

Rootly is cited on 20 of those losses.

25 prompts

6 platforms

Updated Sep 27, 2026 - refreshed weekly

Track Grafana daily

14-day free trial. No card required. Setup comes pre-filled for Grafana.

Also benchmarked

Grafana appears in another vertical

Observability & Monitoring

Track Grafana across these prompts daily.

Start your 14-day trial

5percent

Presence Rate

Low presence

#6 among 11 vendors · still absent from 94.7% of tracked prompt responses

Top-3 citations across 150 prompt × platform pairs

#6of 11

Peer Ranking

#1#11

Mid-packin Incident Management & On-Call

Key Metrics

Presence Rate

5.3%

Share of Voice

2.6%

Avg Position

#4.6

Docs Presence

2.0%

Blog Presence

0.0%

Brand Mentions

1.3%

Platform Breakdown

ChatGPT

16%4/25 prompts

Perplexity

Research dossierCapabilities, use cases, sources, reviews, pricing, and FAQ

Overview

Reviews

4.5/5G2·157+

Praised

Native integration with Grafana observability stack (dashboards, logs, traces)
Cost savings versus PagerDuty and other proprietary tools
Flexible and customizable escalation chains
Strong Slack and ChatOps integration
Simple on-call scheduling with rotation and shift swap support
Open-source transparency and community-driven development
Automatic alert grouping reduces noise during incidents
Wide range of monitoring source integrations (Prometheus, Zabbix, Datadog, etc.)

Criticized

OSS archival (March 2026) forced disruptive migration to paid Grafana Cloud
IRM not available as standalone — requires full Grafana Cloud subscription
Costs can escalate quickly with high data ingestion or large user counts
Steep learning curve for advanced alert routing and template configuration
Initial setup complexity for new users unfamiliar with the Grafana ecosystem
Lack of spend/ingestion caps on pay-as-you-go billing model

Grafana Labs overall receives strong positive sentiment across review platforms, with users consistently praising the flexibility of the platform, its deep data source integrations, and its cost advantage over proprietary tools like PagerDuty. Reviewers of Grafana OnCall specifically highlight its organic fit within Grafana-centric observability stacks, simplicity of escalation chain management, and strong Slack integration. Common criticisms include complexity of initial configuration for new users, cost scaling concerns under pay-as-you-go billing, and the disruption caused by the OSS archival which forced self-hosted users to migrate to Grafana Cloud. No standalone Grafana OnCall-specific G2 or Gartner Peer Insights aggregate score was publicly verifiable at time of research.

Prompt	ChatGPT	Google AI Mode	Bing Copilot	Gemini Search	Perplexity	Grok
Capability1/5 cited (20%)
What on-call tools support noise reduction and alert grouping so engineers aren't paged for every individual monitoring alert during an outage?	Your brand and a competitor were cited	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited

#	Brand	PresencePres.	Share of VoiceSoV	DocsDocs	BlogBlog	MentionsMent.	Avg PosPos
1	Rootly	39.3%	25.9%	2.7%	10.7%	0.0%	#3.6
2	incident.io	34.7%	25.6%	5.3%	23.3%	62.0%	#3.6
3	PagerDuty	27.3%	18.7%	0.0%	2.0%	0.0%	#2.2
4	Opsgenie	20.7%	16.7%	11.3%	0.7%	0.0%	#4.3
5	FireHydrant	9.3%	5.5%	6.7%	0.7%	30.7%	#3.2
6	Grafana	5.3%	2.6%	2.0%	0.0%	1.3%	#4.6
7	ilert	4.7%	2.9%	0.7%	0.0%	0.0%	#5.6
8	OneUptime	2.7%	1.4%	0.0%	0.7%	3.3%	#6.4
9	Better Stack	1.3%	0.6%	0.0%	0.0%	13.3%	#4.5
10	Spike.sh	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	1.3%	—
11	Squadcast	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	—

Developer Experience2/5 cited (40%)
What on-call tools give engineers visibility into their own on-call burden so they can flag unsustainable alert volumes to their manager?	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited

Integrations & Ecosystem1/5 cited (20%)
Which on-call platforms have the most pre-built integrations with monitoring and observability tools for automatic alert ingestion?	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited

Performance & Reliability1/5 cited (20%)
Which on-call tools have a reliable global phone network that can reach engineers in multiple countries with consistent call quality?	A competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	Your brand and a competitor were cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited

Grafana ranks #6 in Incident Management & On-Call AI search.

Key Metrics

Platform Breakdown

Overview

Grafana ranks #6 in Incident Management & On-Call AI search.

Key Metrics

Platform Breakdown

Overview

Prompts where competitors are visible and Grafana is not.

Where Grafana is winning

Where Grafana is losing5

Key Facts

Key Capabilities10

Key Use Cases7

Grafana customer outcomes

Recent Trend

How AI describes Grafana3

Most cited sources8

Alternatives in Incident Management & On-Call6

Reviews

Pricing

Limitations

Topic Coverage

Prompt-Level Results

Vertical Ranking

Turn this into your team dashboard

Frequently asked questions

Setup & First Run2/5 cited (40%)
What on-call and incident platforms offer a public status page as part of the core product without requiring a separate subscription?	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited	A competitor was cited	Neither your brand nor a competitor was cited

Grafana ranks #6 in Incident Management & On-Call AI search.

Key Metrics

Platform Breakdown

Overview

Grafana ranks #6 in Incident Management & On-Call AI search.

Key Metrics

Platform Breakdown

Overview

Prompts where competitors are visible and Grafana is not.

Where Grafana is winning

Where Grafana is losing5

Key Facts

Key Capabilities10

Key Use Cases7

Grafana customer outcomes

Recent Trend

How AI describes Grafana3

Most cited sources8

Alternatives in Incident Management & On-Call6

Reviews

Pricing

Limitations

Topic Coverage

Prompt-Level Results

Vertical Ranking

Turn this into your team dashboard

Frequently asked questions

What does Grafana do?

Who is Grafana best for?

How is Grafana priced?

What are the alternatives to Grafana?

What do users praise about Grafana?

What are common complaints about Grafana?

When was Grafana founded and where?

How big is Grafana?