Grafana vs Lightstep: Observability & APM Comparison (2026)
Grafana offers a free tier and public pricing. Lightstep does not offer a free tier and requires contacting sales for pricing information.
AI Citation Scorecard
How often each is cited by major AI engines when buyers ask observability & apm questions. Last 90 days across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot.
Probes run hourly; each (engine × query) combo retests every ~3 days.
Pricing
Key Features
- ✓All Grafana Cloud services
- ✓Community support
- ✓14 days metrics retention
- ✓8X5 email support
- ✓Pay as you go above Free tier
- ✓Premium support
- ✓Custom retention
- ✓Deployment flexibility
- ✓Custom quotes available
- ✓Predictable pricing based on units
- ✓Scalability for growth
- ✓Evaluation of needs included
When to choose Grafana
Grafana is suitable for users who need a free tier for observability tools, with options for escalating support and feature sets based on pricing plans, and a demand for a broad range of integrations including Slack, Salesforce, AWS, Google Cloud, Elastic, Jira, Microsoft SQL Server, and Databricks. It is also suitable for users who require 14 days of metrics retention at the free tier.
When to choose Lightstep
Lightstep is suitable for users who require custom quotes and predictable pricing based on units, with scalability for growth. It is also suitable for users who need an evaluation of their needs included in the service. It is suited for users who don
Frequently Asked Questions
AI visibility profiles
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