Grafana vs Grafana Mimir
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Grafana
Open observability dashboards and visualization
VS
Grafana Mimir
Scalable long-term storage for Prometheus metrics
| Feature | Grafana | Grafana Mimir |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | ≈5-minute setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 100 · Excellent | 90 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, helm | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 76,876 | ★ 5,238 |
| First released | 2014 | 2022 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Datadog, Chronosphere |
What are Grafana and Grafana Mimir?
Grafana
Grafana is an open-source analytics and visualization platform that builds dashboards from many data sources. It targets operators and analysts who need rich observability dashboards. It is deployed via Docker, packages, or Helm.
- Dashboards from many data sources
- Alerting and annotations
- Large plugin ecosystem
- Templating and variables
Grafana Mimir
Grafana Mimir is an open-source, horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant time series database for Prometheus and OpenTelemetry metrics. It is designed to store and query hundreds of millions of active series.
- Massive cardinality support
- Multi-tenant by design
- Fast query engine
- Object storage backend
Grafana vs Grafana Mimir: key differences
Grafana is written in TypeScript, while Grafana Mimir is built with Go. Grafana is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Grafana Mimir. Grafana is the more established project (first released 2014), while Grafana Mimir arrived in 2022. Grafana has the considerably larger community, at 76,876 GitHub stars versus 5,238.
Why pick each one
Choose Grafana if…
- Beautiful flexible dashboards
- Broad data source support
- Strong community
Watch out for
- Not a data store itself
- Alerting can be complex
Choose Grafana Mimir if…
- Proven at billion-series scale
- Easier to operate than Cortex
Watch out for
- Resource intensive
- Complex for small homelabs
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or Grafana Mimir better?
Grafana is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Grafana Mimir if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Grafana and Grafana Mimir free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Grafana Mimir under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana and Grafana Mimir with Docker?
Grafana: yes. Grafana Mimir: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Grafana or Grafana Mimir?
Grafana has the smaller minimum footprint at 512 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Grafana Mimir. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.