Grafana vs Grafana Tempo

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

Not the right match-up?
FeatureGrafanaGrafana Tempo
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0AGPL-3.0
LanguageTypeScriptGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, helmdocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 76,153★ 5,416
First released20142020
ReplacesDatadogDatadog APM

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana if…

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

Choose Grafana Tempo if…

  • Very cost-effective
  • Simple operations
Grafana Tempo details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana or Grafana Tempo 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 Grafana and Grafana Tempo free and open-source?

Yes. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Grafana Tempo under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Grafana and Grafana Tempo with Docker?

Grafana: yes. Grafana Tempo: yes.

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