Grafana
Grafana is an open-source platform for monitoring, visualization and metric analytics. It connects to data sources such as Prometheus, InfluxDB and Elasticsearch, and others listed in the Grafana docs. Features described in the Grafana documentation (https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/):
- Data sources: many built-in and plugin data sources, so metrics and logs from different systems can be shown together.
- Dashboards: panels with template variables and automatic refresh.
- Alerting: alert rules that notify on threshold conditions.
- Annotations and logs: annotations mark events on graphs; Loki integration supports viewing logs next to metrics.
- Plugins: data source, panel and app plugins extend the platform.
- Access control: authentication options (including LDAP and OAuth) and dashboard-level permissions.
- Visualizations: time series, heatmaps, histograms, geomaps and others; further types via plugins.
- Sharing: snapshots, public/shared dashboards and embedding, subject to configuration.
- HTTP API for provisioning and automation.
- Support: open-source community; commercial support and Grafana Enterprise come from Grafana Labs.
Typical use is time-series monitoring (IT operations, application metrics); this paragraph describes usage, not a verified market claim.
AI features and MCP (as of 2026-10-05)
- Licence: Grafana OSS is AGPL; Grafana Enterprise is the commercial edition (Grafana docs).
- Grafana Assistant: LLM assistant inside Grafana Cloud for troubleshooting, dashboard creation and product questions; self-managed Grafana can connect to a Grafana Cloud Assistant backend. GA/preview status not stated in the docs read.
- MCP: open-source
grafana/mcp-grafana(Apache-2.0) gives MCP clients access to dashboards, datasources (Prometheus, Loki, ClickHouse, Snowflake and others), alerts, incidents and OnCall; read-only mode and RBAC checks; needs Grafana 9.0+. - Positioning vs business BI: see Open-source BI comparison.
Learning
- Grafana tutorials hub (free): https://grafana.com/tutorials/