Grafana Cloud Pricing 2026: Free Tier, Pro Usage, Enterprise
Grafana Cloud pricing in 2026: free for 10K series and 50 GB of logs, Pro on per-series and per-GB usage rates, Enterprise from $25,000 a year. Three bills costed.
Grafana Cloud is free for 10,000 active metric series, 50 GB of logs, 50 GB of traces and 3 users, with 14-day retention. Pro is a $19 monthly platform fee plus usage: $6.50 per 1,000 series above the included 10,000, $0.05 to process and $0.40 to write each GB of logs above 50 GB, and $8 per extra active user. A team sending 50,000 series and 200 GB of logs a month pays about $346.50 on Pro, our arithmetic from the printed rates. Enterprise starts at a $25,000 yearly commitment.
Every rate on this page was read on Grafana Cloud's pricing page on October 26, 2026, and the metering rules on Grafana's billing documentation the same day. The page is unusual among observability vendors: there is no per-host price for the core signals, and every meter is printed in full. The trap is not a hidden fee. It is that three separate meters (series, gigabytes, users) each start billing on their own, and the metrics meter also counts how often you scrape. This page prices each meter, then builds three monthly bills so you can see which line grows first. Whether the product is worth it is the job of our Grafana Cloud review.
Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, tracks 213 monitoring tools as of October 25, 2026 on its monitoring ranking, and the median cheapest paid plan across the 51 that publish one is $19 a month, the exact figure of Grafana Cloud's platform fee. Unlike most of those plans it buys no capacity on its own: the included allowances are the same as Free. The directory record is Grafana Cloud on Toolradar.
Grafana Cloud plans at a glance
| Plan | Price | Retention | Support | Who it fits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0, no card | 14 days for metrics, logs, traces, profiles and k6 results | Community | Side projects, early startups, evaluation |
| Pro | $19/mo platform fee, then pay as you go above the included allowances | 13 months for metrics; 30 days for logs, traces, profiles and k6 results | 8x5 email | Teams that outgrow one free allowance |
| Enterprise | From a $25,000 per year spend commitment | Custom | Premium | Companies with compliance, deployment or volume needs |
The Pro fee is flat regardless of how many products you use, and the usage above the allowances is billed per calendar month. Grafana prints every Pro rate as a "starts at" price with automatic volume discounts above it, and it does not print the discount tiers, so the figures below are the ceiling for a self-serve account, not the floor.
What is free on Grafana Cloud?
| Product | Free allowance per month | Pro rate above it |
|---|---|---|
| Metrics | 10,000 active series | $6.50 per 1,000 series |
| Logs | 50 GB ingested | Per-GB process, write and extra-retention meters, priced in the logs section below |
| Traces | 50 GB ingested | Same per-GB meters as logs |
| Profiles | 50 GB ingested | Same per-GB meters as logs |
| Grafana users | 3 active users | $8 per active user ($55 with Enterprise plugins) |
| IRM (on-call and incidents) | 3 active IRM users | $20 per active IRM user |
| Kubernetes Monitoring | 2,232 host hours and 37,944 container hours | $0.01 per host hour, $0.0007 per container hour |
| Application Observability | 2,232 host hours | $0.025 per host hour, about $18 per host a month |
| Frontend Observability | 50,000 sessions | $0.75 per 1,000 sessions |
| Synthetic checks | 100,000 API and 10,000 browser executions | $5 per 10,000 API, $50 per 10,000 browser executions |
| k6 performance tests | 500 virtual user hours | $0.15 per virtual user hour |
| Grafana Assistant (AI) | 3 active AI users with 40M tokens each, 25M system tokens | $20 per active AI user, $2 per extra 1M tokens |
The free tier is permanent and the limits are hard: a Free account stops at its allowance, while a Pro account bills the overage. The 14-day retention is the practical limit. An incident on the first of the month is gone by the fifteenth, which is fine for a hobby cluster and not for a production team. The 14-day Pro trial that every new account gets is never billed and drops back to Free when it ends. For how these allowances compare with other vendors' free plans, see cloud free tiers compared.
How are Grafana Cloud metrics billed?
Metrics are the meter that decides most Grafana Cloud bills. Pro includes the same 10,000 active series as Free and charges per 1,000 above that, so 50,000 series cost $260 a month before a single log line. That one line is the bill for most teams. An active series is any time series that received a data point in the last 20 minutes, and every distinct label combination is its own series: a counter with 6 modes across 10 hosts and 4 CPUs is 240 series, per Grafana's metrics billing page.
Two rules on that page change the bill more than the headline rate.
- Scrape interval is billable. Pro includes one data point per minute per series. Usage is the higher of active series and total data points per minute, so a Prometheus default 15-second scrape (4 points a minute) bills 50,000 series as 200,000. Grafana's own example: halving the scrape interval doubles the billable usage for the same series count.
- The 95th percentile forgives spikes. Both series and data points are measured at the 95th percentile over the month, which drops roughly the top 36 hours of a 720-hour month. A 24-hour spike from 6,000 to 30,000 series still bills at 6,000; a spike that lasts two days does not.
Enterprise contracts print metrics "as low as $3 per 1,000 series", less than half the Pro rate, which is the main reason a metrics-heavy team reaches the Enterprise commitment early. Grafana also sells Adaptive Metrics, a feature that aggregates unused series and which the pricing page says can cut metrics usage by up to 80%; the saving is the vendor's figure, not ours.
How much do Grafana Cloud logs cost?
Logs above the 50 GB allowance are billed on three dimensions, per the logs billing page: $0.05 per GB processed (what arrives), $0.40 per GB written (what is stored after any drop rules), and $0.10 per GB retained for each 30-day increment beyond the included 30 days. At the default 30-day retention a gigabyte above the allowance costs $0.45, our sum of the process and write rates, with the retain line at zero.
Three details matter for the bill:
- Dropping data pays on the write meter only. Grafana's Adaptive Logs recommends patterns to drop; dropped lines still count on the process meter but never reach the write meter. The pricing page claims up to 50% less ingest from the feature, again the vendor's number.
- Queries are free up to 100 times the written volume. Logs is the only signal with a query meter, and it bills only above that fair-use ratio. A team writing 150 GB can query 15 TB a month without a charge.
- Retention beyond 30 days is a quote. The rate is printed, but the pricing page says to contact Grafana for longer retention options, so a 90-day requirement is a conversation, not a toggle.
The 50 GB allowance is described on the pricing page as "50 GB ingested" and on the logs billing page as an allotment applied before written volume is charged. Our bills below apply it to both the process and the write lines; if Grafana meters processing from the first gigabyte, each bill rises by $2.50.
What does Grafana Cloud cost at three sizes?
We built three monthly bills from the printed Pro rates. Every unit price is Grafana's; the volumes are our assumptions, stated per row. Retention is the included 30 days throughout, and each team scrapes at one data point per minute, so series and billable series are equal.
A side project: 8,000 series, 30 GB of logs, 2 users. Everything sits inside the free allowances, so the bill is $0 on Free and the platform fee alone on Pro, buying 13-month metrics retention and email support rather than capacity.
A 10-engineer startup, the question this page answers: 50,000 active series, 200 GB of logs, 40 GB of traces, 6 Grafana users.
| Line | Our arithmetic | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Pro platform fee | Flat | $19 |
| Metrics, 40,000 series above the allowance | 40 x $6.50 | $260 |
| Logs processed, 150 GB above the allowance | 150 x $0.05 | $7.50 |
| Logs written, 150 GB | 150 x $0.40 | $60 |
| Traces, 40 GB | Inside the 50 GB allowance | $0 |
| Grafana users, 3 above the allowance | 3 x $8 | $24 |
| Monthly total | $370.50 |
Without the three extra users, the 50,000-series and 200 GB bill is $346.50, the figure in the opening paragraph. Metrics are 70% of it. The same team on a 15-second scrape interval would bill 200,000 series, lifting the metrics line to $1,235 and the total to $1,345.50, which is why the scrape interval is the first setting to check on a Grafana Cloud invoice.
A 40-engineer scale-up: 200,000 series, 1,000 GB of logs, 300 GB of traces, 10 Grafana users, Application Observability on 10 hosts running all month.
| Line | Our arithmetic | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Pro platform fee | Flat, as in the startup bill | $19 |
| Metrics, 190,000 series above the allowance | 190 x $6.50 | $1,235 |
| Logs, 950 GB above the allowance | 950 x $0.45 | $427.50 |
| Traces, 250 GB above the allowance | 250 x $0.45 | $112.50 |
| Grafana users, 7 above the allowance | 7 x $8 | $56 |
| Application Observability, 7,200 host hours minus 2,232 included | 4,968 x $0.025 | $124.20 |
| Monthly total | $1,974.20 |
At $1,974 a month this team spends $23,690 a year, our multiplication, within sight of the Enterprise minimum. Since Enterprise prints metrics from $3 per 1,000 series against the Pro rate, a team at this size should ask for a contract rather than stay self-serve. The Pro figures are also "starts at" rates, so automatic volume discounts may already pull the real invoice below our total.
How does Grafana Cloud compare with Datadog and New Relic?
The three vendors meter different things, so the honest comparison is one workload priced three ways. We used the startup's 200 GB of logs and compared the logs line only, with each vendor's own rate card read on October 26, 2026.
| Vendor | Logs rate | 200 GB of logs a month | What is not in that figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grafana Cloud Pro | The process and write rates per GB above 50 GB, plus the platform fee | $86.50 | Metrics series and users are separate meters |
| New Relic Standard | $0.40 per GB above 100 GB free, plus $10 for the first full platform user | $50 | Each additional full platform user is $99, capped at 5 on Standard; Pro users cost $349 on annual commitment |
| Datadog | $0.10 per GB ingested, plus $1.70 per million events indexed for 15 days | $20 ingest plus indexing | Indexing depends on your line size, and Infrastructure costs $15 per host on annual billing |
Read across the row rather than down: New Relic is cheapest for logs alone because of its 100 GB free ingest, Datadog's ingest rate is the lowest but its indexing and per-host fees land elsewhere on the bill, and Grafana Cloud charges nothing per host for metrics, logs or traces. The full Datadog bill at 10 and 50 hosts is costed in Datadog pricing, the New Relic user model in our New Relic review, and the two head to head in Datadog vs New Relic. For the whole category at startup scale, see best observability tools for startups. Prices for the two rivals were read on Datadog's pricing page and New Relic's pricing page.
Hidden costs on a Grafana Cloud bill
None of these is hidden on the pricing page, but each is easy to miss when you only read the three plan cards.
- Host hours on the curated apps. Kubernetes Monitoring, Application Observability and Database Observability bill per active host hour on top of the telemetry they generate, which is billed again at the metrics, logs and traces rates. A host is active if it sent a signal in the last 15 minutes, and Database Observability is the dear one at $0.07 per host hour, about $51 per database host a month. Grafana's FAQ says you can opt out of the curated experience and pay for the telemetry alone.
- Active users. Anyone who logs into Grafana during the month is an active user, and the fourth one is billed. A company where sales and support open dashboards pays for every one of them; the $55 Enterprise plugin seat is per user too.
- IRM users. Anyone on an on-call schedule or escalation chain, or who acknowledges an alert, is an active IRM user, billed at the IRM rate above the first three. An engineering team of 12 on rotation adds $180 a month for paging alone, our arithmetic; Better Stack pricing prices the same function per responder.
- Longer retention. Logs and traces beyond 30 days cost $0.10 per GB per extra 30 days; 90-day retention on the startup's 200 GB adds $40 a month by our arithmetic, if Grafana enables it on request.
- AI tokens. Grafana Assistant and automated investigations draw from 40M tokens per active AI user and a 25M system pool, then $2 per million tokens. The allowances are generous, but an alert storm that triggers investigations draws from the shared pool.
Is Grafana Cloud Pro worth it?
Pro is worth it the month a single free allowance becomes a ceiling, because the fee is the same flat figure a side project pays and nothing else changes until you cross a limit. The team that benefits most sends logs and traces above 50 GB with modest metric cardinality: its bill grows per gigabyte at the summed process and write rate, with no host fee underneath. The team that should model first is the one with many short-lived series, because 100,000 series at the default 15-second Prometheus scrape bills as 400,000 and costs $2,535 a month in metrics alone.
If your first need is uptime checks and paging rather than a telemetry backend, Grafana Cloud is more platform than you need; free uptime monitoring and the best monitoring tools ranking cover lighter options, and teams that only want error tracking should price Sentry per event. Logs-heavy teams can compare the per-GB field in best log management tools, and anyone leaving Datadog will find Grafana Cloud priced at ten hosts in Datadog alternatives.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Grafana Cloud cost per month?
Free is $0 for 10,000 active series, 50 GB each of logs, traces and profiles and 3 users. Pro is a flat monthly platform fee plus usage above those allowances: a per-1,000-series rate, $0.45 per GB of logs or traces at 30-day retention, a per-user rate above three. A team with 50,000 series and 200 GB of logs pays about $346.50 a month on Pro, based on rates read on October 26, 2026.
Is the Grafana Cloud free tier really free?
Yes. It needs no card, never expires, and the account stops at its allowances rather than billing overage. The limit that pushes teams to pay is 14-day retention, not volume: a Free account cannot look back at last month's incident.
What does the Grafana Cloud Pro platform fee include?
The same allowances as Free (10,000 series, 50 GB of logs, traces and profiles, 3 users), longer retention (13 months for metrics, 30 days for the other signals), 8x5 email support and the ability to exceed every allowance on pay-as-you-go rates. It is an access fee, not a capacity bundle.
How does Grafana Cloud count active series?
An active series is a time series that received a data point in the previous 20 minutes, and every distinct label combination is a separate series. Billing uses the higher of active series and total data points per minute, measured at the 95th percentile over the month, so a 15-second scrape interval quadruples the billable count of the same series.
Does Grafana Cloud charge per host?
Not for metrics, logs, traces or profiles, which are billed per series and per gigabyte. The curated Kubernetes Monitoring, Application Observability and Database Observability apps bill per active host hour ($0.01, $0.025 and $0.07) on top of the telemetry they send, with 2,232 host hours a month included.
How much does Grafana Cloud Enterprise cost?
Enterprise starts at a $25,000 per year spend commitment, with metrics priced as low as $3 per 1,000 series, custom retention, premium support and deployment options including a dedicated or customer-owned cloud. The other unit rates are negotiated, not printed.
Is Grafana Cloud cheaper than Datadog?
For metrics, logs and traces with no per-host fee, usually yes at small scale: 200 GB of logs cost $86.50 a month on Grafana Cloud Pro including the platform fee, against $20 of ingest plus indexing and a $15 per host Infrastructure fee on Datadog. Datadog's case is an integrated agent and no per-user charge, which matters once many people need dashboards.
Sources and method
We read Grafana Cloud's pricing page on October 26, 2026, including each product tab and its FAQ, plus the metrics, logs and traces billing pages and the invoice guide for the trial and 95th percentile rules. Competitor rates come from Datadog's pricing page and New Relic's pricing page, read the same day. All figures are self-serve list prices before volume discounts. The three bills multiply printed unit rates by volumes we chose as typical, with 720 hours a month for host hours. The Toolradar figures come from the monitoring ranking and Grafana Cloud on Toolradar; rivals have records there too, such as Datadog on Toolradar and New Relic on Toolradar.
Grafana's pricing page says its model is changing (the process, write and retain meters and the token-billed AI products are recent), so check the page before you commit. These figures were read on October 26, 2026.
Cite this: Devshot, "Grafana Cloud Pricing 2026: Free Tier, Pro Usage, Enterprise", November 2026.
Related reading: Grafana Cloud review, Datadog pricing, Datadog vs New Relic, Datadog alternatives, best observability tools for startups, best monitoring tools, best log management tools, New Relic review, Better Stack pricing, Sentry pricing, cloud free tiers compared and free uptime monitoring.
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