This pairing is the most common false choice in monitoring. Prometheus, from 2012, is a metrics database and alerting toolkit: it pulls metrics from your services, stores them, answers PromQL queries and fires alerts through Alertmanager. It is the de facto standard for Kubernetes. Grafana, from 2014, is the visualisation layer: dashboards over any data source, a large plugin ecosystem, self-hostable for free or run as Grafana Cloud. The edges do overlap, since both list dashboards in their feature sets and Grafana reads from plenty of backends besides Prometheus. In everyday use, though, one collects the numbers and the other draws them.
Most teams run both, and that is the honest answer. Prometheus scrapes and stores the metrics and holds the alerting rules; Grafana sits on top and makes them readable. If you are somehow allowed only one, keep Prometheus, because alerting is the part that pages you and dashboards you can survive without for a while. Choose Grafana alone only when your metrics already live somewhere else and visualisation is the actual gap. Be realistic about running either yourself: both are free and self-hostable, and both carry genuine setup and operational overhead, with Prometheus needing extra components if you want long-term storage and Grafana pushing its stronger capabilities into Cloud add-ons.
Open-source observability and data visualization
Pricing: Open source free, Cloud from $0 (scalable usage-based)
Founded: 2014
Best for: Engineers, SREs, Data Teams
Open-source metrics monitoring and alerting toolkit
Pricing: Free and open source
Founded: 2012
Best for: DevOps, SREs, Platform Engineers
8 of 18 capabilities separate these two. Those come first.
| Feature | Grafana | Prometheus |
|---|---|---|
| Where they differ (8) | ||
| Synthetic Monitoring | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: no |
| Real User Monitoring | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: no |
| API & Browser Testing | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: no |
| AI-Powered | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: no |
| Slack Integration | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: no |
| Multi-Location Checks | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: no |
| SSL Monitoring | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: no |
| Incident Management | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: no |
| Both tools have (8) | ||
| Uptime Monitoring | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: yes |
| Alerting | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: yes |
| CI/CD Integration | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: yes |
| Open Source | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: yes |
| On-Premise / Self-Host | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: yes |
| Free Tier | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: yes |
| API Access | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: yes |
| Dashboards | Grafana: yes | Prometheus: yes |
| Neither tool has (2) | ||
| Self-Healing Tests | Grafana: no | Prometheus: no |
| Status Page | Grafana: no | Prometheus: no |
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Grafana is open-source observability and data visualization, while Prometheus is open-source metrics monitoring and alerting toolkit. Grafana adds Synthetic Monitoring, Real User Monitoring, and API & Browser Testing on top of the shared feature set.
Grafana pricing: Open source free, Cloud from $0 (scalable usage-based). Prometheus pricing: Free and open source. Evaluate against your check volume and team size; entry pricing rarely reflects total cost at scale.
Grafana is designed with Engineers, SREs, and Data Teams in mind, whereas Prometheus targets DevOps, SREs, and Platform Engineers. If your team matches the former profile, Grafana is usually the closer fit.
ObserveOne combines synthetic monitoring with AI browser checks that adapt as your UI changes. It offers a free tier, so you can benchmark it against Grafana and Prometheus directly.
ObserveOne combines AI browser checks with uptime, API, and SSL monitoring on per-run pricing. The free tier is enough to benchmark it against Grafana and Prometheus directly.
Each tool has its own alternatives page too, not just this matchup.