Grafana Alternatives 2026: 5 Free Options
Grafana alternatives: Prometheus, Zabbix, Netdata, Uptime Kuma and 1 more. Prices and licenses checked October 23, 2026.
•3 min read•Monitoring & Observability
Verdict:Leave Grafana when you want one tool to collect the metrics as well as draw the charts, or when you have outgrown running your own observability stack. Grafana is AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host, but the cloud plan is metered, so the cost grows with your data. Prometheus is free under Apache-2.0 and collects the metrics that most Grafana setups read; pair it with Grafana or use its basic UI on a small system. Zabbix, under AGPL-3.0 from version 7.0, is a full monitoring product with alerts and dashboards in one place, which suits a team that wants a single system and accepts more setup. Netdata's agent is GPL-3.0 and gives real-time dashboards per host, with its Business plan at $4.5 a node a month. Uptime Kuma is MIT-licensed and self-hosted, and it covers the simpler case of checking that services respond and publishing a status page. Datadog is a managed platform that bills by usage, so it removes the server work but makes the bill less predictable. The concrete trade-off is between flexible custom panels that you run yourself and a finished product that someone else maintains. Stay on Grafana if your dashboards are the part you care about most and you already run Prometheus or Loki behind them.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Price | Platforms | Best for | Tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prometheus | Free | Self-hosted (Go binary) | Metrics collection with no licence cost | Docs only |
| Zabbix | Free | Self-hosted, Zabbix Cloud | All-in-one infrastructure monitoring | Docs only |
| Netdata | Free (Cloud Community: 5 active nodes, personal non-commercial use); paid from $4.5 per node/month (Business) | Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, Docker, Kubernetes | Real-time host dashboards | Docs only |
| Uptime Kuma | Free (Free: open-source under MIT; self-hosted, no paid plan on the license page) | Linux, Docker | Uptime and status pages | Docs only |
| Datadog | Free (up to 5 hosts, 1-day metric retention); paid from $15 per host/month, billed annually (Infrastructure Pro; $18 on demand) | Web, Agent (Linux, Windows, macOS) | Managed monitoring with traces | Docs only |
| New Relic | Free (100 GB data ingest per month, 1 full platform user); paid from $0.4 per GB ingested beyond the free 100 GB (Standard) | Web | Monitoring and observability | Docs only |
| Splunk | Free (Splunk Observability Cloud Free Edition: up to 15 hosts, no time limit, no credit card; Splunk Enterprise has a 60-day trial (500 MB/day) before a free license) | Self-managed, Cloud | Log analytics and SIEM | Docs only |
Independent comparison. Paid placements are labelled separately; editorial links earn no affiliate commissions. Learn more.
Good fit if
- You want a free metrics store and will keep Grafana for charts (Prometheus is the pick)
- You want alerts and dashboards in one self-hosted product (Zabbix is the pick)
- You want real-time per-host dashboards (Netdata is the pick)
- You only need uptime checks and a status page (Uptime Kuma is the pick)
- You want a managed service and accept usage billing (Datadog is the pick)
Not ideal if
- You rely on Grafana features or integrations that these tools do not replicate
Grafana today: Free (10k metric series, 50 GB logs, 50 GB traces, 3 users, 14-day retention); paid from $19 per month platform fee plus usage (Cloud Pro) (Grafana pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Why people look for Grafana alternatives
Grafana Cloud's free tier holds 10k active metric series, 50 GB each of logs and traces with 14-day retention, and 3 users. Pro adds a $19 monthly platform fee plus usage metered per product: metrics from $6.50 per 1k series, $20 per active IRM user and $8 per active visualization user. Enterprise starts at a $25,000-a-year spend commitment. Self-hosted Grafana remains free but you run it yourself.
Prometheus
Compared with Grafana: Free and Apache-2.0 licensed metrics server with its own query language and a basic built-in UI. You lose Grafana's polished dashboards unless you keep Grafana on top of it, but the collector itself costs nothing to run.
Price: Free (Prometheus pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Platforms and license: Self-hosted (Go binary). Apache-2.0 (open source).
Project activity: 66.8k GitHub stars · latest release v3.15.1 (Oct 21, 2026) · last commit Oct 27, 2026
Best for: Metrics collection with no licence cost.
Worth knowing: Metrics and alerting only; no built-in dashboards beyond a basic expression browser, so it is usually paired with Grafana.
Zabbix
Compared with Grafana: Free under AGPL-3.0 from version 7.0, covering monitoring, alerting and dashboards in one product. It is a full monitoring system, which means more setup than Grafana's visualisation-only role.
Price: Free (Zabbix pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Platforms and license: Self-hosted, Zabbix Cloud. AGPL-3.0 (7.0 and later); GPL-2.0 up to 6.4 (open source).
Project activity: 6.5k GitHub stars · last commit Oct 27, 2026
Best for: All-in-one infrastructure monitoring.
Netdata
Compared with Grafana: Free GPL-3.0 agent with real-time dashboards. Its Business plan is $4.5 per node a month. You gain per-second metrics out of the box, and lose Grafana's freedom to build any panel you want.
Price: Free (Cloud Community: 5 active nodes, personal non-commercial use); paid from $4.5 per node/month (Business) (Netdata pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Platforms and license: Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, Docker, Kubernetes. GPL-3.0+ (Agent); UI and Cloud closed source (open source).
Project activity: 81.2k GitHub stars · latest release v2.12.2 (Oct 23, 2026) · last commit Oct 27, 2026
Best for: Real-time host dashboards.
Worth knowing: Homelab plan is $90 per year for unlimited nodes, non-commercial.
Uptime Kuma
Compared with Grafana: Free MIT licensed self-hosted uptime monitor with status pages. It checks whether services respond, not the detailed metrics Grafana visualises, so it covers a narrower job.
Price: Free (Free: open-source under MIT; self-hosted, no paid plan on the license page) (Uptime Kuma pricing, checked 2026-10-23).
Platforms and license: Linux, Docker. MIT (open source).
Project activity: 93k GitHub stars · latest release 2.5.8 (Oct 26, 2026) · last commit Oct 28, 2026
Best for: Uptime and status pages.
Datadog
Compared with Grafana: Hosted monitoring with dashboards, alerts and traces, billed by usage. You trade Grafana's self-hosted freedom for a managed service with a larger bill as your hosts grow.
Price: Free (up to 5 hosts, 1-day metric retention); paid from $15 per host/month, billed annually (Infrastructure Pro; $18 on demand) (Datadog pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Platforms and license: Web, Agent (Linux, Windows, macOS). Proprietary SaaS.
Best for: Managed monitoring with traces.
Worth knowing: Logs, APM and other products are priced separately; only the Infrastructure Pro host price was read.
Other popular options (paid)
New Relic
Compared with Grafana: Free tier covers 100 GB of data ingest a month and 1 full platform user. Standard charges $0.40 per GB beyond that, with full users at $10 for the first and $99 each after, up to 5.
Price: Free (100 GB data ingest per month, 1 full platform user); paid from $0.4 per GB ingested beyond the free 100 GB (Standard) (New Relic pricing, checked 2026-10-22).
Splunk
Compared with Grafana: Observability Cloud has a free edition for up to 15 hosts with no time limit, and Splunk Enterprise has a 60-day trial at 500 MB a day before a free license. A heavier enterprise logging stack than Grafana.
Price: Free (Splunk Observability Cloud Free Edition: up to 15 hosts, no time limit, no credit card; Splunk Enterprise has a 60-day trial (500 MB/day) before a free license) (Splunk pricing, checked 2026-10-23).
Which one to pick
- You want a free metrics store and will keep Grafana for charts: Prometheus
- You want alerts and dashboards in one self-hosted product: Zabbix
- You want real-time per-host dashboards: Netdata
- You only need uptime checks and a status page: Uptime Kuma
- You want a managed service and accept usage billing: Datadog
Limits of this review
Docs-only for Prometheus, Zabbix, Netdata, Uptime Kuma, Datadog: we did not install or run them, so feature claims come from vendor pages and we did not test import from Grafana. Vendor prices and free limits change; confirm on the linked pricing page before you buy or migrate.
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Kevin Fan
Kevin Fan is a SaaS founder. He runs Free Instead Of, which tracks free and open-source alternatives to paid software and checks each price and free-plan limit against the vendor's own pages.
Methodology
Based on official pricing and product pages checked between 2026-10-22 and 2026-10-23: Grafana, Prometheus, Zabbix, Netdata, Uptime Kuma, Datadog, New Relic, Splunk. Prices, free limits and licenses are the figures shown on those pages on those dates. No tool on this page was installed or run. No accounts were created.