ElastAlert 2 vs Grafana

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

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FeatureElastAlert 2Grafana
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseApache-2.0AGPL-3.0
LanguagePythonTypeScript
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM256 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metaldocker, bare-metal, helm
GitHub stars★ 1,128★ 76,153
First released20212014
ReplacesSplunk AlertsDatadog

Why pick each one

Choose ElastAlert 2 if…

  • Flexible rule engine
  • Many integrations
ElastAlert 2 details

Choose Grafana if…

  • Beautiful flexible dashboards
  • Broad data source support
  • Strong community
Grafana details

Frequently asked questions

Is ElastAlert 2 or Grafana better?

Neither is universally better. Grafana has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are ElastAlert 2 and Grafana free and open-source?

Yes. ElastAlert 2 is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Grafana under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run ElastAlert 2 and Grafana with Docker?

ElastAlert 2: yes. Grafana: yes.

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