# Grafana Cloud

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/observability/grafana-cloud/

Hosted Grafana, Loki, Mimir and Tempo with a small platform fee, usage billing and unusually long metrics retention.

## Who it suits

Metrics-heavy monitoring where 13 months of retention matters — that window is an order of magnitude beyond what the error trackers and most telemetry platforms keep.

Consider something else if Logs and traces get 30 days rather than 13 months, so the headline retention figure does not describe most of what you send it.

## Adoption signals

- Open source: grafana/grafana — 76,702 stars, 14,728 forks (GitHub, checked 2026-09-12)

## iScore

75 / 100 (80% interval 70–81), rank 1 of 9 in observability — interval overlaps the next rank, so this is an ordering, not a finding.

inetGeek's own reading, computed from sourced facts against category peers by disclosed rules. Not a provider claim. Intervals are 80%; a provider with few documented facts is pulled toward the category middle rather than scored on what little is known.
Read this score with care:
- Documented but not scored, because the page states it as text with no comparable number or a yes/limited/no (a one-time, usage-based or other-vendor price, or a per-site choice): events_included. Read them on the provider page; the score neither rewards nor penalises what it could not compare.

Method: https://inetgeek.com/iscore/. Full output with every criterion's basis: https://inetgeek.com/scores.json. Every observability peer ranked: https://inetgeek.com/observability/grafana-cloud/alternatives/

- Price: 72 (57–87), weight 31%, 6 of 7 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: query_price
- Capacity and limits: 55 (39–70), weight 18%, 2 of 3 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: events_included
- Capabilities: 72 (66–79), weight 12%, 2 of 2 criteria scored
- Trust and compliance: 85 (79–92), weight 18%, 10 of 13 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: audit_logs, hipaa_eligible, uptime_sla
- Evidence: 94 (94–94), weight 10%, 4 of 4 criteria scored
- Adoption: 89 (79–99), weight 10%, 1 of 2 criteria scored

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: Yes ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)
- Kind of free offer: Free tier ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)
- What the free plan includes: 50 GB ingested a month with 14-day retention and community support, described as always free. ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-13)
- Credit card to start: No ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-13)
- Entry paid plan: $19/month platform fee for Pro, which includes 10,000 active series before usage billing starts. ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)
- Pricing model: A $19 platform fee plus metered usage, with volume discounts applied automatically rather than negotiated. The enterprise tier starts at a $25,000 annual spend commitment. ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)

### Infrastructure

- Regions: 28 region/provider combinations across AWS, GCP and Azure, from US East and EU Germany to UK, India, Singapore, Japan, Brazil and Australia; a stack cannot change region after creation. ([source](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/security-and-account-management/account-management/regional-availability/), read 2026-09-13)

### Observability

- Events included: Free plan, per month: 10k active metrics series; 50 GB each of logs, traces and profiles; 50k frontend-observability sessions; 500 k6 virtual user hours; 100k API test executions. Grafana meters series, GB, sessions and host hours; no event-count meter is published. ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-13)
- Retention window: 13 months for metrics and 30 days for logs, traces, profiles and k6 tests on Pro. The free tier is 14 days for everything. ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)
- Session replay: Limited — Public preview add-on to Frontend Observability, disabled by default and enabled per stack on request. ([source](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/session-replay/), read 2026-09-13)
- Self-hostable: Supported ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)
- Ingest price per GB: From $0.050 per GB processed, falling to $0.046 above 10,000 GB and $0.044 above 25,000 with automatic volume discounts. ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-06)

### Support

- Support on entry paid plan: Community support on Free; 8x5 email support on Pro, from $19/month plus usage. Enterprise starts at $25,000/year. ([source](https://grafana.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-14)

### Compliance

- SOC 2: SOC 2 report listed in the Grafana Labs Trust Center, available on request. ([source](https://trust.grafana.com/), read 2026-09-13)
- ISO 27001: ISO/IEC 27001 certificate and Statement of Applicability listed in the Trust Center. ([source](https://trust.grafana.com/), read 2026-09-13)
- GDPR / data residency: GDPR, EU-US DPF and UK/Swiss extensions listed in the Trust Center with a DPA; residency comes from choosing one of the published regions at stack creation. ([source](https://trust.grafana.com/), read 2026-09-13)
- PCI DSS: PCI DSS v4.0.1 listed among Trust Center compliance documents. ([source](https://trust.grafana.com/), read 2026-09-13)
- Encryption at rest: AES-256 for storage and HTTPS/TLS in transit; Grafana Cloud manages the keys with industry-standard key management systems. ([source](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/grafana-assistant/privacy-and-security/security/), read 2026-09-13)
- Customer-managed keys: Keys are managed by Grafana Cloud with industry-standard key management systems. — Read from the Grafana Assistant security page, which describes how Grafana Cloud stores customer data. ([source](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/platform/grafana-assistant/privacy-and-security/security/), read 2026-09-13)
- Role-based access control: Grafana Cloud administrative controls and role-based access control (RBAC). ([source](https://trust.grafana.com/), read 2026-09-13)
- Private networking / VPC: AWS PrivateLink, Azure Private Link and GCP Private Service Connect are documented connectivity options for Grafana Cloud. ([source](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/security-and-account-management/), read 2026-09-13)
- Dedicated infrastructure: Bring Your Own Cloud deploys the managed stack into a dedicated cloud account in your AWS or GCP (Azure case-by-case) rather than a Grafana Labs-owned account. ([source](https://grafana.com/products/bring-your-own-cloud-byoc/), read 2026-09-13)

## Compared with

- [Grafana Cloud vs SigNoz](https://inetgeek.com/compare/signoz-vs-grafana-cloud/)
- [Grafana Cloud vs OpenObserve](https://inetgeek.com/compare/grafana-cloud-vs-openobserve/)
- [Grafana Cloud vs Axiom](https://inetgeek.com/compare/axiom-vs-grafana-cloud/)
- [Grafana Cloud vs Datadog](https://inetgeek.com/compare/datadog-vs-grafana-cloud/)
- [Grafana Cloud vs Elastic Cloud](https://inetgeek.com/compare/elastic-cloud-vs-grafana-cloud/)
- [Grafana Cloud vs Better Stack](https://inetgeek.com/compare/betterstack-vs-grafana-cloud/)
- [Grafana Cloud vs GlitchTip](https://inetgeek.com/compare/glitchtip-vs-grafana-cloud/)
- [Grafana Cloud vs Sentry](https://inetgeek.com/compare/grafana-cloud-vs-sentry/)