# Grafana — Business Intelligence & Dashboards

Grafana by Raintank Inc. (Grafana Labs) holds a panel rating of 3/5 from 6 AI judges (category median 3/5), as of 2026-11-01. Provenance: Rest of world; sovereignty: not determined.

- Vendor: Raintank Inc. (Grafana Labs) (https://grafana.com/oss/grafana/)
- Category: [Business Intelligence & Dashboards](https://whats-best.ai/software/business-intelligence.md)
- Provenance (editorial classification): Rest of world
- Canonical page: https://whats-best.ai/software/business-intelligence/grafana
- Alternatives: https://whats-best.ai/software/business-intelligence/grafana/alternatives ([markdown](https://whats-best.ai/software/business-intelligence/grafana/alternatives.md))
- Data as of: 2026-11-06 · evaluated 2026-11-01 · oldest source captured 2026-11-01

**AI-generated.** Every score, rationale and verdict here is written by a panel of AI judges from public evidence — an analysis, not a hands-on test. Every fact quotes the vendor page it was read from. No score can be bought. How scores are made: https://whats-best.ai/methodology

## At a glance

- Vendor: Raintank Inc. (Grafana Labs)
- Headquarters: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026
- Data hosting: Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026
- Free plan: Yes, per the vendor’s own page [S2]

## The panel's verdict

Grafana, from Raintank Inc., d/b/a Grafana Labs of New York, is a dashboards product whose plugins query existing sources in real time without ingestion into a vendor store — self-managed, on Grafana Cloud or as a self-hosted Enterprise edition. Scores are strongest on governance and portability, 7 to 8: role-based permissions, SAML, SCIM and LDAP sync, an HTTP API with OpenAPI specifications, Git Sync and a Terraform provider. Sharing and embedding is weakest at 4 to 5: scheduled PDF email is documented; no public information was found on Slack or Microsoft Teams delivery, Excel export or embedding. Sovereignty splits, with five judges at 6 and the data analyst at 4: subprocessors AWS, Azure and Google Cloud are listed as USA (Default), EU regions only on customer selection subject to availability, and judges divide on whether the self-managed open-source edition proves a sovereign chain. Pricing transparency spans 5 to 7: the free tier and Pro at $8 / active user plus a $19 per month platform fee are published; Enterprise is custom with a $25,000 per year minimum commit.

**Speaks for it:**
- Live queries through 150+ data source plugins read data where it already lives, with no migration or ingestion into a vendor store
- Governance and portability scored 7 to 8, the highest range on any criterion, on role-based permissions, SAML, SCIM provisioning and LDAP sync, an HTTP API with OpenAPI specifications, Git Sync and a Terraform provider
- Self-managed open-source and self-hosted Enterprise editions are documented for buyers who host their own instance
- The free tier's limits are published — 10k metrics, 50GB logs, 3 users, 14-day retention — and Pro lists $8 / active user plus a $19 per month platform fee including 3 active users
- The subprocessor list names each provider with its address, the data processing agreement is downloadable, and ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 are certified through A-LIGN

**Held against it:**
- Sharing and embedding scored 4 to 5: scheduled PDF reports by email are documented, but we found no public information on delivery to Slack or Microsoft Teams, Excel export, or embedding dashboards
- We found no public information on a semantic layer where metrics such as revenue or churn are defined once and reused across reports, and self-service and modelling scores range 4 to 6
- The contracting entity is Raintank Inc. of New York, and infrastructure subprocessors AWS, Azure and Google Cloud are listed as USA (Default), with EU regions available only when the customer selects them, subject to availability
- The Enterprise tier is custom-priced with a minimum commit of $25,000 per year, and viewer seat pricing, VAT treatment and minimum term are not published
- We found no public information on scheduled or incremental refresh intervals, a gateway for databases behind a firewall, or connector limits per plan

**Best for:**
- You need dashboards over databases and other sources that stay where they are, queried live through plugins rather than ingested into a vendor store
- Your team wants to self-host on its own servers and manage dashboards as code through Git Sync, the Terraform provider and the documented HTTP API
- You need role-based permissions, SAML single sign-on, SCIM provisioning and LDAP sync before handing dashboards to a wide internal audience
- You want to start on the published free tier limits — 10k metrics, 50GB logs, 3 users, 14-day retention — before committing

**Avoid if:**
- You need to embed dashboards inside your own software product: the captured pages document scheduled PDF email, the Shared Dashboards and Snapshot APIs appear on the deprecated interfaces list, and we found no public information on an embedding licence model
- You need a cloud chain with EU hosting as the default: the published subprocessor list shows AWS, Azure and Google Cloud as USA (Default), and additional regions such as EU are available only when the customer selects them, subject to availability
- You need predictable costs for many occasional viewers — ask the vendor: the public pages we read do not show it

## Scores by judge and criterion

Scores out of 5, each judge scoring independently against the published rubric (v1). "n/r" = not rated: the vendor publishes no price, or the judge found no public information on that criterion.

| Criterion | The Finance Controller | The Managing Director | The Data Analyst | The IT Administrator | The SaaS Product Lead | The Skeptic |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Data sources, connectors & refresh | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3.5/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3.5/5 |
| Dashboards, charts & interactivity | 2.5/5 | 2.5/5 | 2.5/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| Self-service analysis & shared metrics | 2.5/5 | 2.5/5 | 2/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| Sharing, scheduled reports & embedding | 2.5/5 | 2.5/5 | 2/5 | 2/5 | 2.5/5 | 2/5 |
| Access control, administration & portability | 3.5/5 | 3.5/5 | 3.5/5 | 4/5 | 3.5/5 | 3.5/5 |
| European sovereignty | 3/5 | 3/5 | 2/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| Pricing transparency | 3/5 | 2.5/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3/5 | 3.5/5 |
| **Weighted verdict** | **3/5** | **2.5/5** | **2.5/5** | **3/5** | **3/5** | **3/5** |

### The judges

- **The Finance Controller** (v1.0): Head of controlling at a 250-person machine builder in Baden-Württemberg. Closes the month from DATEV, the ERP, the CRM and a dozen Excel files that colleagues still mail around, and spends two days a month copying numbers into the management report. Wants the sources connected and refreshed on a schedule, one definition of contribution margin on every page, a report that prints cleanly for the advisory board, and data that stays where the auditors expect it.
- **The Managing Director** (v1.0): Runs a 40-person service company with HubSpot, an online accounting tool, a help desk and a project management app, and no one whose job is data. Wants revenue, pipeline, utilisation and open tickets on one screen in the office and on their phone, set up in an afternoon from ready-made connectors, a weekly summary in the inbox on Monday morning, and a price that does not double when the whole team wants to look.
- **The Data Analyst** (v1.0): The first data hire at a Hamburg e-commerce scale-up, with orders, marketing spend and customer data landing in a PostgreSQL warehouse every night. Answers the same question three times a week because every department computes revenue differently. Wants a SQL editor and a query builder for colleagues, metrics defined once in a model that lives in Git, natural-language questions that show the query they ran, and a way out that does not mean rebuilding every dashboard.
- **The IT Administrator** (v1.0): IT lead at a mid-sized healthcare supplier whose reports touch customer, pricing and employee data. Is asked to approve a BI tool after a department has already started a trial. Reads where extracts and caches are stored, whether the tool reaches the ERP database through a gateway or wants it opened to the internet, whether sales sees only its own region, and whether single sign-on and an audit log come with the plan or behind a sales call. Prefers an edition they can run themselves.
- **The SaaS Product Lead** (v1.0): Product lead at a Vienna software company selling fleet management to 600 business customers, each of whom asks for reports the team keeps building by hand. Wants dashboards embedded in the product under its own brand, every customer seeing only their own rows, customers building their own views without a ticket, and an embedding licence whose cost they can put into the product's price before signing.
- **The Skeptic** (v1.0): Has seen "connect any data source" on a tool with eight connectors and a CSV upload, "self-service" that ends with every department defining revenue its own way, "free viewers" that need a paid licence to open a shared link, and "AI insights" that never show the query. Asks where the extracts are stored, whether dashboards and definitions can be exported in a format another tool reads — and what leaving would cost.

## European sovereignty — proven facts

Built only from facts on the vendor's own pages; a dimension we could not prove is left open, never scored as zero. Headline: not determined.

| Dimension | Finding | Points | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal entity | Not determined | — | — |
| Hosting location | Not determined | — | — |
| Hosting options | Not determined | — | — |
| Open source | Not determined | — | — |
| Data processing agreement | Not determined | — | — |
| Transfer impact assessment | Not determined | — | — |

## Key facts

Each fact is the vendor's own statement, cited to the source page it was read from ([S*n*] → Sources).

**Compliance**
- CCPA: 45 · 2 [S9]
- Cookies: strictly necessary session cookies only on grafana.com [S10]
- Csa star: yes [S6]
- Data privacy framework: yes · yes · yes [S9]
- Data request response time: privacy@grafana.com · 30 [S9]
- Dev security: continuous integration, change management policies, static code analysis, vulnerability analysis [S6]
- Dlp: yes [S6]
- Dnt: no [S9]
- DPA download: PDF · yes [S7]
- Fedramp: yes [S2]
- GDPR: yes [S2]
- GDPR DPA: yes [S6]
- GDPR roles: yes · yes [S9]
- ISO 27001: A-LIGN · ISO 27001 [S6]
- Minors age limit: 18 [S9]
- No sale of data: no [S9]
- Pci: Grafana Labs corporate environment for client payment processing · third-party approved scanning vendors · PCI [S6]
- Pci dss: yes [S2]
- Pen testing: yes · independent third-party [S6]
- Privacy rights: access · rectification_or_erasure · restriction · data_portability · objection [S9]
- Security practices: yes [S6]
- SOC 2 type2: A-LIGN · SOC 2 Type 2 [S6]
- SOC type ii: yes [S2]
- Social login providers: GitHub · Google [S9]
- Trust portal: yes [S6]
- User lcm training: yes [S6]
- Vuln assessments: regular [S6]

**Data**
- Deletion on account termination: Account termination leads to deactivation/deletion in active databases, with some retention for fraud/legal reasons [S9]
- Retention policy: Personal information kept only as long as necessary unless law requires longer [S9]
- Usage statistics: improve content and services · yes [S10]

**Hosting**
- International transfers: United States · other countries [S9]

**Integrations**
- Adoption: 1852 [S12]
- Authentication: yes · yes · yes [S5]
- Cloud API separate: Separate Grafana Cloud API for Cloud Stack resources [S5]
- Cloud data source integrations: 150+ [S11]
- Cloud free tier: 10000 · 50 [S11]
- Documentation link: yes [S12]
- Grafana cloud availability: yes [S12]
- Http API: Every Grafana instance exposes an HTTP API for programmatic access [S5]
- Issue tracker: yes [S12]
- Legacy APIs deprecated: 29 · deprecated [S5]
- List: AWS · Google Cloud · Microsoft Azure · Kubernetes · Datadog · New Relic [S2]
- New APIs: /apis · consistent API versioning · /api · deprecated [S5]
- New APIs list: Alert enrichment · Alert notifications · Banners · Dashboard · Folder · SLO/Kubernetes CRD (Cloud only) · Playlist · Resource history · Secrets Management · Stars · yes [S5]
- Openapi spec: yes · yes · yes [S5]
- Plugin count: 150 [S1]
- Repository link: yes [S12]
- Swagger UI: /swagger-ui · yes [S5]
- Terraform provider: yes [S5]

**Legal**
- Address: 165 Broadway, 23rd Floor, New York, NY 10006 United States [S9]
- AI training restriction: using Service to train or fine-tune competing products is prohibited [S10]
- Arbitration mandatory: yes · yes [S10]
- Arbitration provider: American Arbitration Association (AAA) [S10]
- Class action waiver: yes [S10]
- Dmca contact: legal@grafana.com [S10]
- Entity: Raintank Inc., dba Grafana Labs [S9]
- European privacy supplement: EEA · UK · Switzerland · yes [S9]
- Export restrictions: US export controls and sanctions restrictions apply [S10]
- Feedback assignment: yes [S10]
- Governing law: England and Wales, courts London, England · Republic of Ireland, courts Dublin, Ireland · New York and controlling United States federal law, courts New York, NY, USA · New South Wales, Australia [S10]
- Indemnification: yes [S3]
- Legal entity: Grafana Labs and its affiliated companies [S10]
- Liability cap: liability limited to amounts paid by customer [S10]
- Msa governs proprietary software: proprietary Software including free trials governed by MSA [S10]
- No selling usernames: yes [S10]
- Privacy policy updated: 2026-07-10 [S9]
- Proprietary software tos dec2023: MSA governs proprietary software usage [S10]
- Subcontracting allowed: yes [S10]
- Termination right: termination for any or no reason, without notice or liability [S10]
- Terms change effect: first day of calendar month following posting [S10]
- Tos last updated: July 10, 2026 [S10]
- User content ownership: yes [S10]
- Warranty disclaimer: service provided as-is, all warranties disclaimed [S10]

**Pricing**
- Agent observability pro: 2 · 1.5 [S4]
- Application observability pro: 0.025 · 18 [S4]
- Assistant pro: 40M · 20 · 2 [S4]
- Cloud billing model: yes · yes [S1]
- Cloud free tier: 50GB · 3 · 50GB · 10k · 50GB · yes · 500VUh · 50k [S1]
- Enterprise deployments: Public Cloud · Federal Cloud · Bring Your Own Cloud [S4]
- Enterprise plan: yes · 25000 [S4]
- Enterprise price: yes · premium · cloud · self-hosted · 25000 [S2]
- Enterprise viz deployment: yes [S4]
- Free retention: 14 · metrics · logs · traces · profiles · k6 [S4]
- Free tier: community · yes · 3 [S2]
- Free tier: Grafana Cloud Free Forever plan offered as alternative [S3]
- Free tier: yes · 0 [S4]
- Investigations pro: 2 · no [S4]
- K6 enterprise scale: 1000000 [S4]
- Kubernetes monitoring free limit: 2232 · 37944 [S4]
- Kubernetes monitoring pro: 0.01 · 0.0007 [S4]
- Logs free limit: 14 · 50 [S4]
- Metrics free limit: 10000 · 14 [S4]
- Pro price: 8x5 email · 8 · 3 · 19 [S2]
- Pro support: 8x5 · email [S4]
- Profiles pro: 30 · 50 [S4]
- Synthetics browser pro: 50 [S4]
- Visualization enterprise plugins pro: 55 [S4]

**Product**
- Active ldap sync: yes [S3]
- Adaptive logs: up to 50% [S4]
- Adaptive metrics: up to 80% [S4]
- Adaptive telemetry: yes · yes [S2]
- Adaptive telemetry: yes [S4]
- Adoption active instances: 12420 [S11]
- AI assistant: yes [S2]
- AI assistant plugin: 13.0 · yes [S1]
- Alerting: yes [S2]
- Alerting: yes [S11]
- Annotations: yes [S2]
- Annotations: yes [S11]
- Authentication terraform: yes [S11]
- Cloud migration: yes [S1]
- Cloud queries served: 529946712 [S12]
- Community services not official support: Community Services are not an official customer support channel [S10]
- Community stats: 2,000+ · 67.5k · 1.5M+ [S1]
- Custom branding: yes [S3]
- Dashboard insights: yes [S3]
- Dashboard search: yes [S3]
- Dashboard templates: yes [S1]
- Data source flexibility: no ingestion to vendor store required; unifies existing data wherever it lives [S2]
- Data source permissions: yes [S3]
- Dependencies: >=11.6.11-0 <12 \|\| >=12.0.10-0 <12.1 \|\| >=12.1.7-0 <12.2 \|\| >=12.2.5-0 [S11]
- Description: Google BigQuery data source plugin for Grafana [S11]
- Developer: Grafana Labs [S12]
- Developer: Grafana Labs [S11]
- Drilldown apps: yes [S1]
- Dynamic dashboards: yes [S1]
- Enterprise edition: yes · yes · yes [S1]
- Enterprise plugins: Splunk · New Relic · AppDynamics · Oracle · Dynatrace · ServiceNow · Datadog [S3]
- Export as dashboard: yes [S3]
- Git sync: 12.0 · yes [S1]
- Grafana advisor: yes [S1]
- Grafana dependency: 11.6.7-0 [S12]
- Last updated: 2026-10-30 [S12]
- Last updated: 2026-10-30 [S11]
- Ldap integration: yes [S3]
- Logs table: yes [S1]
- Loki lbac: yes [S1]
- Nested folders: yes [S1]
- Observability as code: yes [S1]
- Observability signal support: logs · metrics · traces [S2]
- Open source edition: yes [S1]
- Opentelemetry native: Kubernetes Monitoring · Application Observability · Grafana SLO · RUM · yes [S2]
- Overview: Enterprise capabilities for self-managed Grafana with enterprise security, data source plugins, and expert support [S3]
- Plugin type: Data source [S12]
- Plugins: yes [S2]
- Plugins platform: yes [S3]
- Presence indicator: yes [S3]
- Pricing model: yes · yes [S4]
- Purpose: Query and visualize Snowflake data metrics from within Grafana [S12]
- Queries served: 206646029 [S11]
- Rbac: yes [S3]
- Recording rules: yes [S1]
- Releases: 29 [S12]
- Releases past year: 18 [S11]
- Reporting: yes [S3]
- Required gcp APIs: BigQuery API · Cloud Resource Manager API [S11]
- SAML authentication: yes [S3]
- Saved queries: yes [S1]
- SCIM: yes [S3]
- Sql expressions: yes [S1]
- Sql visual query editors: yes [S11]
- Team sync: yes [S3]
- Template variables: yes [S11]
- Transformations: yes [S2]

**Subprocessors**
- Analytics marketing providers: Google Analytics · Facebook · LinkedIn · Autopilot · Clearbit · VWO · Hotjar [S10]
- Anthropic: Anthropic · USA (Default) · Optional: AI feature [S8]
- Aws: Amazon.com Inc. (AWS) · USA (Default)* · Infrastructure, Cloud Service Provider, Optional: AI feature [S8]
- Azure: Microsoft Corporation (Azure) · USA (Default)* · Infrastructure, Cloud Service Provider [S8]
- Gcp: Alphabet Inc., Google (GCP) · USA (Default)* · Infrastructure, Cloud Service Provider, Optional: AI feature [S8]
- K6 separate list: yes [S8]
- Openai: OpenAI · USA (Default) · Optional: AI feature [S8]
- Palantir: Palantir Technologies Inc. · USA (Default) · For customers using Grafana’s Federal Cloud offering [S8]
- Payment processor: Network Merchants, LLC (NMI) · payment data storage · https://www.nmi.com/privacy-policy [S9]
- Region selection: EU available; customer region selection subject to availability · yes [S8]
- Sendgrid: Twilio Inc. (Sendgrid) · USA (Default) · Email, Alerting for SaaS [S8]
- Tavily: AlphaAI Technologies (Tavily) · USA (Default) · Optional: AI feature [S8]
- Updates subscription: yes [S8]

**Support**
- Community channels: community · Slack · docs · tutorials · Developer Guide [S1]
- Critical response SLA: 2 [S3]
- Custom training: yes · yes · yes [S3]
- Free tier: community [S4]
- Help resources: Grafana documentation · Grafana community forums [S11]
- Long term support: yes [S3]
- Roadmap assurance: yes [S3]
- Technical account management: yes [S3]
- Ticket support: yes [S3]

7 more facts on the canonical page: https://whats-best.ai/software/business-intelligence/grafana

## Questions

### Is Grafana European?

No. whats-best.ai classifies Grafana as Rest of world.

### Where does Grafana store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026.

### Does Grafana have a free plan?

Yes. Grafana has a free plan, per [the vendor’s page captured 1 Nov 2026](https://whats-best.ai/evidence/13887).

### What are the best alternatives to Grafana?

As of 1 Nov 2026, the panel rates [Metabase (3.5/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/business-intelligence/metabase), [Preset (Apache Superset) (3.5/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/business-intelligence/preset) and [Holistics (3/5)](https://whats-best.ai/software/business-intelligence/holistics) highest among the other 15 Business Intelligence & Dashboards products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is [Luzmo](https://whats-best.ai/software/business-intelligence/luzmo) (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: [how scores are made](https://whats-best.ai/methodology#ordering). The full list, with European products first: [Grafana alternatives](https://whats-best.ai/software/business-intelligence/grafana/alternatives).

## What this page leaves out

- 12 pricing facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 1 product fact could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and was left out of this page and of the panel’s material.
- 5 sovereignty dimensions could not be confirmed on the vendor’s own pages and are shown as unknown.
- 6 of the readings below were written against an earlier fact sheet — a fact has been corrected, added or pulled since. Until the panel next runs on this product you are reading the older judgement.

## Sources

- [S1] Vendor product page (open source): https://grafana.com/oss/grafana/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S2] Features page (Grafana Cloud): https://grafana.com/products/cloud/grafana/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S3] Features page (Grafana Enterprise): https://grafana.com/products/grafana-enterprise/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S4] Pricing page: https://grafana.com/pricing/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S5] API documentation: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/developer-resources/api-reference/http-api/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S6] Security / trust page: https://grafana.com/legal/security-compliance/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S7] Data processing agreement (dpa): https://grafana.com/legal/data-processing-agreement/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S8] Subprocessor list: https://grafana.com/legal/list-of-subprocessors/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S9] Privacy policy: https://grafana.com/legal/privacy-policy/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S10] Terms of service: https://grafana.com/legal/terms/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S11] Data sources, connectors & refresh — found from sitemap: https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/grafana-bigquery-datasource/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S12] Data sources, connectors & refresh — found from sitemap: https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/grafana-snowflake-datasource/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S13] Access control, administration & portability — found from sitemap: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/administration/roles-and-permissions/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S14] Self-hosting / on-premises installation docs — found from the homepage: https://grafana.com/get/ (checked 2026-11-01)
- [S15] Code repository (open-source licence) — found from the homepage: https://github.com/grafana/grafana (checked 2026-11-01)

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Cite as: whats-best.ai, "Grafana — Business Intelligence & Dashboards", AI panel analysis, as of 2026-11-06. https://whats-best.ai/software/business-intelligence/grafana

Corrections: https://whats-best.ai/correct/1267?target=page