We may earn a commission if you buy through links on this page. It never changes a score or a ranking. How we make money
It's a split decision.
Grafana is an observability platform for teams building around logs, metrics, traces and other telemetry. Its Grafana Cloud plans include a free tier, with Pro costs growing with usage. PagerDuty is an incident response and reliability platform built around on-call, incident coordination, automation and AI-assisted triage. Its free plan is narrower, while paid plans charge per user or by annual platform fees. Pick Grafana to investigate system behavior; pick PagerDuty to coordinate the response when systems fail.
01Side by side
| Grafana | PagerDuty | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | $19/month platform fee plus usage on Pro | Per-user Professional or annual platform fees |
| Free tier | 10k active series; 50 GB/month; 14-day retention | 5 users; one schedule; 100 monthly notifications |
| Open source and licence | Open source; licence name not published | Open-source status and licence not published |
| API and SDKs | OpenTelemetry and Prometheus; SDK details not published | APIs and MCP; SDK language details not published |
| Integrations | Hundreds of plugins and integrations | 750+ integrations |
| Platforms | Web | Web |
| Limits and scaling | Usage charges rise above included Pro allowances | Plan event, action and seat allowances apply |
| Lock-in and data export | Open standards; export details not published | APIs and MCP; export details not published |
Grafana Choose Grafana if
- Choose Grafana if telemetry analysis is your main workload.
- Choose Grafana if OpenTelemetry and Prometheus fit your stack.
- Choose Grafana if you want a free observability tier.
PagerDuty Choose PagerDuty if
- Choose PagerDuty if you need on-call schedules and escalation policies.
- Choose PagerDuty if incident workflows and response automation are priorities.
- Choose PagerDuty if you need its 750+ listed integrations.
02Pricing at real usage
Grafana Cloud Free costs $0 and includes 14-day retention for metrics, logs, traces, profiles and k6, plus 10k active metric series and 50 GB/month for logs, traces and profiles. Pro adds a $19 monthly platform fee; usage above included allowances is pay-as-you-go. For example, Pro lists logs at $0.050/GB processed, $0.400/GB written and $0.100/GB retained. Enterprise requires a $25,000 annual minimum commit.
PagerDuty Free covers five users, one on-call schedule, one escalation policy and 100 SMS or phone notifications monthly. Professional costs $25 per user monthly, or $21 per user monthly when billed annually. Its platform plans instead have annual fees: Starter is $2,800, Essential $12,000 and Plus $48,000, with stated event, AI action and seat allowances. Check which plan's included capacity fits your team before comparing headline prices.
03API, SDKs and integration
Grafana Cloud connects existing tools and data sources, emphasizing OpenTelemetry and Prometheus plus hundreds of plugins and integrations. That makes it a fit for stacks that already emit telemetry through those standards. Grafana's product pages do not publish language-specific SDK or CLI details, so confirm the supported client libraries and automation workflow for your codebase before choosing it.
PagerDuty lists a Developer Platform, APIs and MCP connections, alongside 750+ integrations. Its pages do not publish SDK language details, so teams should check the developer documentation for client libraries, authentication and API limits before building an integration. Both products can connect to an existing stack, but their integration goals differ: Grafana brings telemetry sources together for analysis, while PagerDuty connects operational systems for incident detection and response. Verify that the integrations you need cover the events and actions your workflows depend on.
04Open source, self-hosting and lock-in
Grafana is identified as open source and says Grafana Cloud is built on open standards including OpenTelemetry and Prometheus. Its homepage says teams can connect existing tools without a rip-and-replace migration. The licence name, self-hosting options and data-export procedures are not published on the product pages described here; check the licence and export path for the specific Grafana component and plan you intend to use.
PagerDuty's open-source status, licence, self-hosting options and data-export procedures are not published on its product pages. It lists APIs and MCP as ways to extend connections, but that alone does not establish a complete migration path. Before committing incident history or operational workflows, ask PagerDuty about export formats, retention and what happens to integrations and automation if you leave.
Questions people ask
What companies use Grafana?
Grafana says Grafana Cloud is used by organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Its homepage does not identify every customer in that claim. Grafana also names customers in its customer materials, so check those for specific examples relevant to your industry or stack.
Is PagerDuty an AWS service?
PagerDuty presents itself as the provider of the PD Reliability Platform, not as an AWS service. Its site lists more than 750 integrations and says teams can extend connections through APIs and MCP. Check its integration documentation for the AWS services and event paths your team needs.
Is Prometheus the same as Grafana?
No. Grafana lists Prometheus as an open standard it connects to, alongside tools for dashboards and telemetry analysis. The two names refer to separate products in a stack; Grafana's integration model lets teams bring Prometheus data into its observability platform.
Which is better, Grafana or Dynatrace?
That depends on the workload. Grafana's stated focus is telemetry observability, visualization and cost management; PagerDuty's is incident response and reliability. The product details here do not support a direct comparison with Dynatrace, so compare its current integrations, pricing and deployment options against your requirements.