Active-metrics pricing prompted a move to self-hosted Thanos → Self-hosted Thanos
“Anyone struggles with this horrible active metrics based pricing too?”
Grafana alternatives: where its users went, and why they left
Grafana (grafana.com) has 19 sourced reports on Friction, drawn from 97 public source threads (as of 2026-10-15), 3 of them describing a move away. This page reads them for one question: if you are leaving Grafana, what do its users say they moved to, and what pushed them out?
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Where Grafana users say they went
Switching reports that name a destination. A count is the number of reports naming it, not a market share: Friction only holds what people say in public.
| Named alternative | Reports naming it | Newest report |
|---|---|---|
| Thanos | 2 | 2024 |
| Traceway | 1 | 2026 |
| Victoria Metrics | 1 | 2024 |
In their words
Avoided hosting a five-service Grafana stack for small-team observability → Traceway
“I did NOT want to host a 5 service stack (grafana, otel collector, prometheus, mimir, loki, k8s)”
User would switch away from Grafana if an alternative existed
“I wish there was something else I could switch to”
What pushes people away from Grafana
The most-reported open problems, worst severity first. Each links to the item with its source.
Git Sync PR previews fail in non-Main organizations · Reliability & bugs · Blocks work
“error rendering screenshot: remote rendering request failed, status code: 401”
A NULL star timestamp breaks dashboard star operations · Reliability & bugs · Blocks work
“every dashboard star operation fails: clicking the star icon returns HTTP 500”
Stat panel values become unreadably small after upgrading to 13 · UI & usability · Blocks work
“My many stat panels mostly became unreadable with the upgrade to 13.2.2. The value is displayed in tiny font”
Ad hoc data exploration in Grafana feels cramped versus Datadog · UI & usability · Annoyance · 2 people
“Using Grafana or New Relic feels like going from a 30" screen to a 14" laptop”
Even Grafana by itself is heavyweight for a small logging setup · Self-hosting & upgrades · Annoyance · 2 people
“Grafana’s whole stack is massively overwrought if you’re self hosting, and rapidly expensive for managed services”
Other observability and monitoring tools on Friction, and what their users struggle with
Switching trades one set of problems for another. The same evidence, for each tool Friction covers in this category:
Datadog
29 reports · 53 source threads · most-discussed area: Pricing & plans
Sentry
20 reports · 93 source threads · most-discussed area: Integrations
Counts and reports reflect people who post in public (developers and technical buyers are over-represented). A tool with fewer reports is not a better tool; it may only be discussed less. How the data is built.