Grafana suits teams that want one dashboard across many data sources, with 150+ plugins, an open source edition and an always-free Grafana Cloud tier. Kibana suits teams whose data already lives in Elasticsearch, because it's the interface Elastic built for exploring, searching and visualising that data. If you run the Elastic stack, Kibana comes with it; if your metrics and logs are spread across tools, Grafana is the more flexible front end.
Both tools draw charts from operational data, so they're often treated as interchangeable. They aren't, and the difference comes down to where your data sits. I read Grafana's open source and plans pages and Elastic's Kibana page and Kibana documentation.
Grafana and Kibana compared
| Grafana | Kibana | |
|---|---|---|
| Data sources | Many, through 150+ plugins | Data stored in Elasticsearch |
| Open source edition | Grafana OSS | Self-managed Elasticsearch download |
| Hosted option | Grafana Cloud | Elastic Cloud Hosted or Serverless |
| Always free hosted tier | Yes, with 14 days retention | Free trial on Elastic Cloud |
| Search and exploration | Dashboards and alerts | Discover, Lens and ES|QL queries |
| As code | Dashboards and alerts deployed in your pipeline | Not covered on the pages I read |
Kibana is tied to Elasticsearch by design
Elastic's own product page lists Kibana as one of the Elasticsearch components, described as the place to explore, visualise and build dashboards using data stored in Elasticsearch. Its documentation calls it the UI of the Elasticsearch platform. That's a strength if all your logs already go into Elastic, because Discover lets you browse raw documents and Lens builds charts in a few clicks, but it isn't a general dashboard for other databases the way Grafana is.
Grafana's case: one dashboard over everything
Grafana's open source page says that with 150+ plugins you can unify all your data sources into a single dashboard, and it pushes observability as code, so dashboards and alerts ship with each service. Its GitHub repository shows 67,563 stars on the page I read. Grafana Cloud has an always-free tier for personal projects and early-stage startups with 14 days of retention for metrics, logs, traces and profiles, and the Pro tier extends metrics retention to 13 months.
Kibana's case: search and analysis built in
Kibana's documentation leans on what Elasticsearch does well. You can query with ES|QL or the Query DSL, browse documents in Discover, build visualisations with Lens and Dashboards, run machine learning to detect anomalies in time series data, and set alerts when conditions are met. Elastic Cloud offers a free trial, and you can also download Elasticsearch to run locally or on Kubernetes.
Grafana Labs is open about where its hosted tiers lead: Pro is self-serve with 8x5 email support and 13 months of metrics retention, while Enterprise is a full-service offer that can run in public cloud, federal cloud or your own cloud account. Elastic's Kibana docs, meanwhile, cover geospatial analysis for logistics, real estate and IoT data, where location matters, which the Grafana pages I read don't mention.
Pick by where your data lives
- Everything already flows into Elasticsearch: Kibana.
- Metrics in one tool, logs in another, business data in a database: Grafana.
- You want deep text search across logs: Kibana with Elasticsearch.
- You want an always-free hosted tier for a side project: Grafana Cloud.
- You want dashboards reviewed like code: Grafana's observability as code.
Dashboards are only useful when they answer a business question, so read my dashboard build checklist and this overview of data analytics tools before you start building.
My advice on Grafana or Kibana
If you're starting fresh and your data is scattered, choose Grafana, begin on the free Grafana Cloud tier and connect your sources one by one. If your team already ships logs into Elasticsearch, use Kibana, since it's built for that data and Elastic's search sits right behind it. You can also run both, with Kibana for log investigation and Grafana for the wall dashboard everyone looks at.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana free?
Grafana OSS is open source, and Grafana Cloud has an always-free tier for personal projects and early-stage startups with 14 days of retention.
Does Kibana only work with Elasticsearch?
Elastic describes Kibana as the place to explore, visualise and build dashboards using data stored in Elasticsearch, and its docs call it the UI of the Elasticsearch platform.
Can Grafana read data from Elasticsearch?
Grafana says its 150+ plugins let you unify your data sources into a single dashboard. Check the plugin list for each source you use.
What is Kibana Discover?
Discover lets you browse documents in your indices, apply filters and explore raw data directly.
How long does Grafana Cloud keep data on the free tier?
Grafana's plans page lists 14 days of retention for metrics, logs, traces, profiles and k6 tests on the free tier.
