Understand Grafana Assistant pricing and usage

Grafana Assistant is billed based on usage. For the pricing model — active AI users, token usage, Assistant Investigations, and what’s included with your plan — refer to Grafana Assistant pricing. For current rates, refer to the Grafana pricing page.

This article explains the usage behavior you see in the product — conversation limits and usage analytics — and how to control access and set usage limits for your organization.

Before you begin

Confirm you can open Assistant and Assistant Investigations in your stack.
Connect with your Grafana Labs account contact for billing and usage questions.

Understand conversation limits

Grafana Assistant shows the current state of limits that affect your current conversation or your ability to send messages.

Each conversation includes a context limit indicator that shows how much of the chat fits in the current context window. If a conversation gets close to the model’s context window, Assistant may compact the conversation. If a request exceeds the context window, Assistant may offer to start a new chat with a summary.

When monthly usage approaches a configured limit, Assistant shows a warning indicator in the chat input with current usage details. When a limit is exhausted, Assistant shows a limit message and prevents further use for that limit until it resets or the limit is changed.

Limit messages show actions based on your permissions and the limit type. Users with usage permissions can open Assistant > Usage. Administrators on Free plans may see an option to upgrade for token limits. Users without usage permissions are asked to contact an administrator.

Investigation usage warnings appear only in Investigation mode, because investigation usage applies only to investigation workflows.

View organization usage analytics

The Usage Analytics dashboard helps you track consumption and plan your budget.

Navigate to Assistant > Usage to access the Usage Analytics dashboard. This dashboard shows active users, messages, investigations, and total used tokens for your stack. Access to this page requires grafana-assistant-app.usage:read.

By default, grafana-assistant-app.usage:read is included in the Assistant Admin role, and that role is granted to the Grafana organization Admin basic role.

You can also view your current usage against limits for tokens and investigations directly in the dashboard. This visibility helps you track how close you are to reaching limits associated with your plan.

You can filter the dashboard by time range to understand adoption patterns and usage trends. Use the time range picker to select Month to date, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, or Last 90 days. This helps you plan budgets and communicate with stakeholders about expected costs.

The Usage Analytics dashboard covers the current stack. To review token usage by individual user and service account, and to see how much usage is included with your plan compared to additional, select Assistant in the Usage tab of the Cost Management and Billing app. For more information, refer to Understand Grafana Assistant usage and cost.

Ask your Grafana Labs contact for usage summaries if you don’t have access to Usage Analytics. Your contact can provide reports and help you understand your usage patterns.

Control organization access and limits

You can manage who has access to Assistant and configure usage limits. Use the limits controls to set monthly user and token limits, or use RBAC to restrict access to specific users and teams.

Set usage limits

Navigate to Assistant > Usage, open the Active Users view, and click Edit limits to configure the maximum unique users per month for your stack.

Set the monthly active user limit to 0 to disable the cap and allow unlimited active users. When you set a positive number, the system tracks monthly active users against this cap. The settings display your current monthly active users count alongside the configured limit.

You can also configure monthly token limits from the Tokens view by clicking Edit limits. Token limits are entered in millions of tokens and can apply to the whole stack, to the default per-user limit, and to the system-initiated token pool.

In Grafana Cloud, you can also set per-user token limits for specific teams. If a user belongs to multiple teams with token limits, the highest per-user team limit applies. The stack limit applies to total token usage across the stack, regardless of per-user, team, or system-initiated token pool limits.

Token limits apply to month-to-date usage, including usage from before the limit was set. If a user’s current monthly usage already exceeds a newly configured limit, Assistant blocks that user immediately. The user can use Assistant again after the next monthly reset, or after you raise or remove the limit.

The limits controls require the grafana-assistant-app.usage:write permission. By default, this permission is also included in the Assistant Admin role. Click Save to apply your changes.

Increase token limits during an incident

In Grafana Cloud, you can prepare a Grafana team with a higher per-user token limit so responders can continue using Assistant after they reach their usual limit. This increases their allowance; it doesn’t reserve tokens. Usage follows your plan’s normal billing.

To edit token limits, you need the grafana-assistant-app.usage:write permission, which the Assistant Admin role includes by default. You also need permission to manage team membership.

Before an incident:

Create a dedicated Grafana team for temporary access.
In Assistant > Usage, open the Tokens view and configure a higher per-user limit for the team. Choose unlimited only if your stack allows it.
Decide who manages temporary membership and when they remove it. If you use an identity provider, ensure its group membership syncs to the Grafana team.
Check that your stack has enough remaining token allowance.

During an incident, add responders to the team. Membership changes can take time to propagate, so verify that the higher limit applies before relying on it. If a user belongs to multiple teams with configured limits, the highest team limit applies.

A team override changes only the per-user limit. If another token limit blocks usage, adjust that limit too:

Limit reached	Action
Per-user limit	Add the user to a team with a higher limit, or raise their applicable limit.
System-initiated limit	Raise the shared system-initiated limit. Team overrides don’t apply to service accounts.
Stack limit	Raise the stack limit. Higher user or system-initiated limits don’t bypass it.

You can only increase limits within the limits allowed for your stack. Other usage limits, including investigation-count limits, still apply.

After the incident, remove temporary memberships and restore any limits you changed. Assistant doesn’t automatically expire these changes. Tokens already consumed still count toward monthly usage. If usage exceeds a restored limit, that limit blocks further use until the monthly reset or another increase.

For API instructions, refer to Token limits API.

Restrict access with RBAC

Use role-based access control (RBAC) to restrict Assistant access to specific users or teams. You can modify custom roles to include or exclude Assistant permissions. Refer to Manage Assistant access with RBAC for the Assistant roles and permissions.

To remove Assistant access from a basic role such as Viewer or Editor, update the basic role with the RBAC API and remove the Assistant permissions you don’t want that role to grant. Refer to Manage Grafana RBAC roles for API instructions.

Changing basic role definitions to remove Assistant access may have other impacts on user permissions. Contact Grafana Labs support if you need help with RBAC configuration. Your support contact can review your requirements and recommend the best approach for restricting access or managing costs.