---
title: "Set up Grafana Assistant in self-managed Grafana | Grafana Labs"
description: "How to connect a self-managed Grafana deployment to a Grafana Cloud Assistant backend"
---

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

## Review the hybrid model

Assistant uses a hybrid deployment model for self-managed installations. The Assistant UI runs in your own Grafana deployment. The backend, usage limits, and billing stay in a Grafana Cloud stack you connect during setup.

When you use Assistant, the prompts you submit and the query context needed to generate a response are sent to the Grafana Cloud backend for processing. Your underlying data sources and infrastructure remain in your own environment.

For full details on data handling, refer to [Manage your data privacy and security](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/privacy-and-security/).

## Prepare your deployments

Review the required Grafana Cloud and self-managed Grafana access before you connect your deployment.

- You have a Grafana Cloud stack with Assistant enabled. Refer to [Set up Grafana Assistant in Grafana Cloud](../04-set-up-grafana-cloud/) for instructions.
- You have a self-managed Grafana 13.0.0 or later deployment.
- You have organization administrator access in the self-managed Grafana deployment.
- You have administrator access in the Grafana Cloud stack.

## Connect your deployment

Connect your self-managed Grafana deployment to the Grafana Cloud stack that provides the Assistant backend.

The connection flow installs the Assistant app in your self-managed Grafana instance and pairs it with your Grafana Cloud stack through an authorization flow. After the connection succeeds, Assistant becomes available in the self-managed Grafana UI.

For full setup instructions, refer to [Set up Grafana Assistant in self-managed Grafana](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/get-started/self-managed/#connect-your-deployment).

> Note
> 
> **Connect to Grafana Cloud** sends your Grafana URL, including internal hostnames, to Grafana Cloud so the two deployments can be paired.

## Review available features

After you connect, core chat, querying, dashboarding, and navigation are available in self-managed Grafana. Some Grafana Cloud-only features aren’t. For the full comparison, refer to [What is Grafana Assistant?](../../01-intro/02-what-is-assistant/) and [Set up Grafana Assistant in self-managed Grafana](/docs/grafana-cloud/machine-learning/assistant/get-started/self-managed/).