Both of these platforms will let you run your observability stack for nothing but the cost of the servers. Grafana's open-source projects, and SigNoz's Community Edition, can be downloaded and self-hosted without a license fee, and both companies sell a managed cloud for teams that would rather not operate it. On paper, that makes them close rivals.
The difference shows up the first time you try to run either one yourself. A self-hosted Grafana stack usually means Grafana for dashboards plus Mimir for metrics, Loki for logs, and Tempo for traces, often with Pyroscope for profiles, each a separate distributed system with its own storage, scaling rules, and query language. SigNoz is a single application on top of one ClickHouse database that stores logs, metrics, and traces together. That architectural choice, one database or four, explains most of what follows, including where each platform is stronger in the cloud.
Grafana Cloud is a managed set of open-source backends behind the most flexible dashboarding tool available, with a large ecosystem of integrations, on-call, synthetic monitoring, and AI built around it. SigNoz is younger and more focused. SigNoz is an OpenTelemetry-native, all-in-one APM built on a single ClickHouse store, with logs, metrics, traces, and exceptions in one product, priced by data volume with unlimited users.
This comparison covers architecture, self-hosting, querying, APM, logs, metrics and infrastructure, dashboards, frontend monitoring, AI, alerting and incidents, pricing, and enterprise needs.
Here is the short version. Many of these rows trace back to the single-store versus multi-store design.
| Category | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Separate backends: Mimir, Loki, Tempo, Pyroscope | One application on ClickHouse |
| Open-source license | AGPL for core projects | Apache 2.0 for the Community Edition |
| OpenTelemetry | ✔, via Alloy and OTLP | ✔, native from the start |
| Query languages | PromQL, LogQL, TraceQL | Query builder, ClickHouse SQL, PromQL |
| APM and tracing | ✔, Tempo and Application Observability | ✔, core strength |
| Logs | ✔, Loki, label-indexed | ✔, ClickHouse, full attribute search |
| Infrastructure and Kubernetes | ✔, extensive | ✔, host and Kubernetes views |
| Dashboards | ✔, industry-leading | ✔, simpler |
| Frontend monitoring | ✔, Frontend Observability and k6 synthetics | Web Vitals and mobile monitoring |
| On-call and incidents | ✔, Grafana IRM | Alerts only |
| AI | Grafana Assistant and Sift | Noz assistant and MCP server |
| Users | Billed per active user beyond 3 | Unlimited |
| Cloud pricing model | $19 platform fee plus usage per signal | $49 minimum with usage credit, then per GB and per sample |
Grafana Cloud separates its signals. Grafana Alloy or an OpenTelemetry collector sends metrics to Mimir, logs to Loki, traces to Tempo, and profiles to Pyroscope, and Grafana dashboards query all of them. Each backend is tuned for its signal: Mimir scales Prometheus metrics, Loki keeps log storage cheap by indexing only labels, and Tempo stores traces in object storage. Signals connect through shared labels and trace IDs.
SigNoz stores everything in ClickHouse, a column database built for fast analytical queries. Because logs, metrics, and traces share one store, a single query can join across them, and filtering on any attribute is fast without deciding ahead of time which fields to index. The trade-off is that SigNoz depends on one engine for every workload, while Grafana can scale each signal on its own.
| Architecture | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | Four specialized backends | One ClickHouse database |
| Collection | Alloy, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus exporters | OpenTelemetry collector |
| Cross-signal queries | Via labels and trace IDs | Native, same store |
| Scaling | Per signal | One engine for all signals |
Grafana splits OpenTelemetry data across four backends, and SigNoz keeps it in one database but stops at observability. Better Stack accepts OpenTelemetry natively into a single warehouse for logs, metrics, and traces, then runs uptime checks, on-call, incidents, and status pages on the same data.
One store is simpler to query, and simpler still when the incident tooling lives there too. Explore Better Stack.
The open-source paths differ more than the licenses suggest.
Self-hosting Grafana's full stack means running several distributed systems, each with ingesters, queriers, compactors, object storage, and its own failure modes. Many teams start with a small single-binary setup and find that scaling Loki and Mimir becomes a project of its own. That operational load is a large part of why Grafana Cloud exists. The core projects use the AGPL license, which matters to some legal teams.
SigNoz's Community Edition is one application plus ClickHouse, deployable with Docker or Helm, under Apache 2.0. Running ClickHouse well at scale still takes skill, but there is one database to tune instead of four. SigNoz also offers enterprise self-hosting with support for organizations that need data on their own infrastructure. SigNoz is often pitched as an open-source alternative to Datadog, and our Datadog vs SigNoz comparison covers that matchup.
| Self-hosting | Grafana | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| License | AGPL | Apache 2.0 |
| Components to operate | Grafana, Mimir, Loki, Tempo, often Pyroscope and Alloy | SigNoz plus ClickHouse |
| Typical deployment | Helm charts per component | Docker or Helm |
| Operational difficulty at scale | High | Moderate |
Grafana gives each signal its own language. PromQL for metrics is the industry standard and widely known. LogQL for Loki and TraceQL for Tempo follow similar ideas but are separate skills. Grafana's query builders and Grafana Assistant can write these for you, but power users still need all three.
SigNoz offers a visual query builder that works across logs, metrics, and traces, with ClickHouse SQL available for logs and traces and PromQL for metrics. For teams that already know SQL, that is usually the shorter learning curve.
| Querying | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| Metrics | PromQL | PromQL and query builder |
| Logs | LogQL | Query builder and ClickHouse SQL |
| Traces | TraceQL | Query builder and ClickHouse SQL |
| One language across signals | ✘ | Query builder, plus SQL for logs and traces |
Grafana needs three query languages, and SigNoz offers SQL for logs and traces but PromQL for metrics. Better Stack lets you query logs, metrics, and traces with SQL in one warehouse, with PromQL available for metrics, so dashboards and investigations use one syntax throughout.
The best query language during an outage is the one everyone on the team already knows. Build charts with SQL.
APM is SigNoz's center of gravity, and its interface shows it.
SigNoz presents services with request rates, error rates, and latency percentiles, links straight into traces, and shows each trace as a flame graph and waterfall. Exceptions are captured and grouped alongside the traces they came from, and you can filter traces on any span attribute because ClickHouse stores them in full.
Grafana Cloud's Application Observability builds service dashboards from OpenTelemetry data, with RED metrics, service maps, and links into Tempo traces and Loki logs. Tempo handles large trace volumes cheaply, and TraceQL can search spans by structure and attributes. Pyroscope adds continuous profiling, which SigNoz does not match in depth.
| APM | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| Service overview with RED metrics | ✔ | ✔ |
| Flame graphs and waterfalls | ✔ | ✔ |
| Exception tracking | Via traces and logs | ✔, grouped |
| Continuous profiling | ✔, Pyroscope | Limited |
| Service maps | ✔ | ✔ |
The two log engines take opposite approaches to indexing.
Loki indexes only labels, such as service, namespace, or pod, and stores log content compressed in object storage. That keeps costs low at high volume, but searching for a value inside the log body means scanning, which can be slow across wide time ranges unless your labels narrow the search first.
SigNoz stores logs in ClickHouse columns, so filtering on any attribute, including nested JSON fields, is fast without planning labels in advance. Its Logs Explorer supports live tail, JSON filtering, and OpenTelemetry attribute views, and log lines link to their traces.
| Logs | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| Indexing | Labels only | Columnar, any attribute |
| Search on log content | Scan, faster with good labels | Fast filtering |
| Live tail | ✔ | ✔ |
| Trace correlation | ✔ | ✔ |
| Cloud price | About $0.45 per GB plus retention | $0.30 per GB at 15 days, $0.40 at 30 days |
Grafana's metrics heritage is hard to beat.
Mimir is Prometheus-compatible at scale and keeps metrics for 13 months on Grafana Cloud Pro. Kubernetes Monitoring, hundreds of integrations, and prebuilt dashboards cover clusters, databases, cloud services, and more. The cost to watch is active series, billed at $6.50 per 1,000 above the 10,000 included. If you are deciding between running Prometheus yourself and adopting Grafana's full stack, our Prometheus vs Grafana comparison explains how the two pieces fit together.
SigNoz collects host, container, and Kubernetes metrics through the OpenTelemetry collector and offers infrastructure views for hosts and Kubernetes objects. It accepts Prometheus metrics and supports PromQL. Its catalog of ready-made integrations is smaller than Grafana's, though anything the OpenTelemetry collector can scrape will work.
| Metrics and infrastructure | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| Prometheus compatibility | ✔, native | ✔ |
| Kubernetes monitoring | ✔, extensive | ✔ |
| Prebuilt integrations | Hundreds | Smaller catalog, plus any OTel receiver |
| Pricing unit | Active series | Samples ingested |
| Default retention | 13 months on Pro | 1 month, longer at higher rates |
Grafana bills metrics by active series, and SigNoz by samples with rates that rise with retention. Better Stack charges for metrics by data volume instead, speaks PromQL as well as SQL, and keeps the series beside the logs and traces that explain them.
Metrics pricing should not punish you for adding the label that would have found the bug. See Better Stack metrics.
Grafana is the reference point for dashboards, and SigNoz does not try to compete on breadth.
Grafana's panel types, templating, transformations, and ability to combine dozens of data sources in one view are unmatched, and a large library of community dashboards means many integrations come with views ready to use.
SigNoz dashboards cover the common panel types, are built with the same query builder used elsewhere in the product, and can be imported from JSON. They do the job for service and infrastructure views but offer far fewer visualization options and data sources.
| Dashboards | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| Panel variety | Extensive | Common types |
| External data sources | Dozens | Mainly its own data |
| Community dashboard library | Large | Smaller |
| Templating and variables | ✔ | ✔ |
On the browser side, Grafana Cloud measures page performance, catches JavaScript errors, follows user sessions, and ties each frontend request to its backend trace. Synthetic Monitoring and k6 add uptime checks and load testing.
SigNoz covers Web Vitals, including LCP, CLS, INP, and TTFB per URL, and mobile monitoring for iOS, Android, and Flutter. It does not offer session replay, synthetic checks, or load testing.
| Frontend | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| Web Vitals | ✔ | ✔ |
| Browser errors and sessions | ✔ | Check current plan |
| Mobile monitoring | Web-focused | ✔, iOS, Android, Flutter |
| Synthetic checks | ✔ | ✘ |
| Load testing | ✔, k6 | ✘ |
Grafana's AI is broader. SigNoz's is newer and closer to the data.
Ask Grafana Assistant a question and it can draft the query in whichever of Grafana's languages fits, assemble a dashboard, or work through a longer investigation. Sift complements it by checking automatically for spikes, slowdowns, and noisy neighbors once an incident is declared. Three Assistant users come free, extra ones start at $20, and an open-source MCP server lets outside AI tools reach Grafana's dashboards and alert rules.
SigNoz offers Noz, an in-product AI assistant for asking questions about your telemetry, and an MCP server that lets tools such as Claude Code query traces, logs, and metrics in natural language.
| AI and MCP | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| AI assistant | ✔, Grafana Assistant | ✔, Noz |
| Automated incident checks | ✔, Sift | ✘ |
| Writes queries for you | ✔ | ✔ |
| MCP server | ✔, open source | ✔ |
| AI pricing | 3 users included, then from $20 each | Included |
Grafana's AI spans several backends, and SigNoz's assistant answers questions when asked. Better Stack's AI SRE begins investigating as soon as an incident opens, querying logs, metrics, and traces in one warehouse, and its MCP server gives Claude or Cursor the same access.
The most useful AI is the one already digging before anyone types a question. See Better Stack AI SRE.
Grafana Cloud goes further after the alert fires.
Grafana Alerting evaluates rules across every data source and routes notifications through contact points. On top of that, Grafana IRM brings rotations, escalation, paging by call or text, and a full incident workflow that can start from any panel, costing nothing for up to 3 active users and $20 for each one after.
SigNoz supports alerts on logs, metrics, traces, and exceptions, with notification channels such as Slack, PagerDuty, and email, and planned maintenance windows to silence alerts during scheduled work. It has no on-call scheduling or incident management of its own, so teams pair it with a separate paging tool.
| Alerting and incidents | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| Alert rules on all signals | ✔ | ✔ |
| Maintenance windows | ✔, mute timings | ✔ |
| On-call scheduling | ✔, Grafana IRM | ✘ |
| Phone and SMS paging | ✔ | Via integrations |
| Incident management | ✔ | ✘ |
| Status pages | ✘ | ✘ |
SigNoz hands alerts to someone else's pager, and Grafana stops short of status pages. Better Stack bundles paging with unlimited calls and texts for $29 per responder, Slack or Teams incident channels, and public status pages, all next to the telemetry that triggered the alert.
Detection, paging, and customer updates belong in one place when every minute counts. Explore Better Stack incident management.
Both clouds are usage-based, but they meter different things.
Grafana's free plan allows 10,000 series, 50 GB per month of each of logs, traces, and profiles, and 3 users, all kept for 14 days. Pro adds a $19 monthly fee and bills overages: metrics at $6.50 for every 1,000 series and kept for 13 months, other signals at roughly $0.45 per GB across processing and writing and kept for 30 days, plus $8 per extra user and $20 per extra IRM user.
SigNoz Teams costs $49 a month, which includes $49 of usage. Beyond that, logs and traces cost $0.30 per GB at 15 days of retention, $0.40 at 30 days, and $0.60 at 90 days, and metrics cost $0.10 per million samples at one month of retention. Users and hosts are unlimited. The Community Edition is free to self-host, startups can qualify for a $19 plan, and Enterprise starts at about $4,000 a month.
Take 15 engineers, 50,000 active metric series scraped once a minute, 300 GB of logs, and 100 GB of traces a month, with 30 days of retention for logs and traces. At one sample per minute, 50,000 series produce about 2.2 billion samples a month.
| Monthly cost | Grafana Cloud Pro | SigNoz Teams |
|---|---|---|
| Platform or base | $19 | $49, credited against usage |
| Metrics | 40,000 billable series, about $260 | About 2.2 billion samples, about $216 |
| Logs | 250 GB billable, about $113 | 300 GB at $0.40, $120 |
| Traces | 50 GB billable, about $23 | 100 GB at $0.40, $40 |
| Users | 12 beyond 3, $96 | Unlimited |
| On-call | IRM, $20 per user beyond 3 | Separate tool |
| Approximate total | About $510 | About $376 |
SigNoz comes out cheaper here, mainly because users are free. Grafana's free allowances matter more for smaller teams, and its numbers change a lot depending on how many series your labels create. Neither total includes on-call for SigNoz or IRM for Grafana.
On compliance, Grafana Cloud holds SOC 2 Type II and GDPR coverage, serves regulated buyers with FedRAMP and PCI DSS options, and lets you pick the region your stack runs in. SigNoz offers SOC 2 Type II, an Enterprise plan with dedicated support and custom deployments, and self-hosted enterprise options for teams that need data on their own infrastructure. Confirm current certifications with both vendors before procurement. For a broader view of how SigNoz handles enterprise needs against a larger vendor, our New Relic vs SigNoz comparison covers that ground.
| Enterprise | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type II | ✔ | ✔ |
| FedRAMP | ✔ | ✘ |
| Data residency | ✔, regional stacks | ✔, self-hosted or regional cloud |
| Self-hosted with support | Grafana Enterprise | ✔, Enterprise |
| SSO | ✔ | ✔ |
Grafana Cloud is the better fit when you need the widest coverage, the best dashboards, and on-call in the same platform, or if your team already lives in Prometheus and PromQL. It suits platform and SRE teams monitoring large, varied infrastructure, organizations that combine many data sources in one view, and regulated buyers who need FedRAMP. Keep an eye on active series and per-user charges.
SigNoz is the better fit when you want an OpenTelemetry-native APM with fast search across every attribute, a simpler self-hosting story, and pricing that does not charge for users. It suits product engineering teams focused on services and traces, companies standardizing on OpenTelemetry, and teams that prefer an Apache 2.0 license. Plan for a separate paging tool and fewer dashboard options.
The license and the price list make these look similar. Grafana Cloud wins on breadth, with more integrations, better dashboards, and incident tooling built in. SigNoz wins on simplicity, with one database, one query builder, and no per-user meter.
So think about which kind of complexity your team would rather own. If you will use the dashboards, the integrations, and IRM, Grafana's extra moving parts are worth it. If your team mostly debugs services and traces, SigNoz gives you that with one database instead of four, and that difference grows every time you have to scale it.
Grafana's MCP server spans several backends, and SigNoz's covers telemetry but not on-call or incidents. Better Stack's MCP server sits over logs, metrics, traces, on-call, and incidents in one platform, so Claude or Cursor can query logs with SQL, check who is on call, acknowledge an incident, and build a chart in one conversation.
With everything behind one MCP endpoint, your assistant can investigate and respond without switching tools. Try Better Stack.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
A detailed comparison of Better Stack and SigNoz covering architecture, pricing, distributed tracing, log management, infrastructure monitoring, incident management, RUM, AI features, and enterprise readiness.
A detailed 2026 comparison of New Relic and SigNoz across architecture, APM, logs, infrastructure, AI, pricing, and security, covering managed SaaS versus open-source, OpenTelemetry-native observability and which fits your team, budget, and operational capacity.
Sumo Logic vs SigNoz compared across log management, APM, Cloud SIEM, AI capabilities, and pricing. How scan-based log analytics and security stacks up against OpenTelemetry-native, open-source observability with zero query fees.
We use cookies to authenticate users, improve the product user experience, and for personalized ads. Learn more.