---
title: "Data sources at a glance | Grafana Labs"
description: "Summary comparison of common data sources."
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

## Quick reference

| Data source          | Type     | Best for            | Query language            |
|----------------------|----------|---------------------|---------------------------|
| **CloudWatch**       | Cloud    | AWS resources       | CloudWatch syntax         |
| **Elasticsearch**    | Logs     | Full-text search    | Lucene/DSL                |
| **Google Sheets**    | Flexible | Spreadsheet data    | Cell references           |
| **Infinity**         | Flexible | APIs, files         | JSONPath                  |
| **InfluxDB**         | Metrics  | IoT, high-volume    | Flux, InfluxQL, SQL (v3+) |
| **Loki**             | Logs     | Cost-effective logs | LogQL                     |
| **MySQL/PostgreSQL** | SQL      | Application data    | SQL                       |
| **Prometheus**       | Metrics  | K8s, cloud-native   | PromQL                    |

## Decision flowchart

[Data source decision flowchart: start with data type, then narrow by use case](decision-flowchart.svg "Data source decision flowchart: start with data type, then narrow by use case")