Grafana Cloud Application Observability
8.9#2 in log management softwareFrom $0.03 a monthFree planAndroidiOSWebAPI
VisitGrafana Cloud Application Observability vs Grafana Loki
Grafana Loki
8.9#1 in log management softwareFrom $19 a monthFree planWebAPILinuxSelf-hosted
VisitWhat both publish
| Fact | Grafana Cloud Application Observability | Grafana Loki |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation depth | The documentation covers setup, instrumentation, pricing, cost optimization, troubleshooting, APIs, SDKs, dashboards, integrations, and signal exploration. | The documentation covers architecture, deployment modes, configuration, ingestion clients, operations, multi-tenancy, LogQL, APIs, troubleshooting, upgrades and release notes. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Grafana Cloud connection tiles support Java, .NET, Beyla, Grafana Alloy, OTLP, and the upstream OpenTelemetry Collector. | Official documentation lists Grafana Alloy as the recommended collector and describes OpenTelemetry, Promtail, Fluent Bit, Fluentd, Vector, Logstash and other clients. |
| License | The Grafana open-source project is distributed under AGPL-3.0-only, with listed Apache-2.0 exceptions; Grafana Cloud itself is a managed service. | Grafana states that Loki is released under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3. |
| Purpose | Grafana Cloud Application Observability provides out-of-the-box application monitoring and uses OpenTelemetry and Prometheus data to support root-cause analysis. | Loki is a log aggregation system designed to store and query logs from applications and infrastructure. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.5 out of 5 from 209 reviews | 219 reviews are listed for Grafana Labs, the maker of Loki; the profile shows 155 five-star, 62 four-star, 1 three-star and 1 one-star review counts. |
| Rating on Gartner Peer Insights | 4.6 out of 5 from 437 ratings | 4.6 out of 5 from 348 ratings for Grafana Cloud, the managed Loki platform |
| Rating on TrustRadius | 8.6 out of 10 from 173 reviews | 8.1 out of 10 from 21 reviews |
Grafana Cloud Application Observability plans
- FreeFree
- Pro$0.03 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
Grafana Loki plans
- Grafana Cloud Logs FreeFree
- Grafana Loki OSS self-hostedFree
- Loki (self-hosted)Free
- Grafana Cloud Logs Pro$19 a month
- Grafana Cloud Logs Enterprise—
Pick Grafana Cloud Application Observability if…
It suits software engineers who need to detect anomalies, investigate causes, and address application problems. Teams using OpenTelemetry or Prometheus can use its listed compatibility and Alloy pipelines.
Pick Grafana Loki if…
Loki suits teams that need to aggregate and query application or infrastructure logs and can manage a self-hosted deployment or use Grafana Cloud Logs. Its label-based indexing and LogQL are central considerations for selecting it.