---
title: "Which Grafana? | Grafana Labs"
description: "What Grafana Cloud is and what its capabilities are beyond self-hosted OSS, how to tell it apart from a cloud provider's managed Grafana, and how to start free."
---

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

## You might be using Grafana, but not Grafana Cloud

You could be thinking, “I already use Grafana, so I must be on Grafana Cloud.” Confusion happens when:

- You aren’t sure whether your Grafana comes from Grafana Labs or from your cloud provider.
- A feature you saw in Grafana Cloud documentation is missing from your setup, and it isn’t clear why.
- You’re unsure which product the docs, pricing info, or emails are talking about.

## What’s Grafana Cloud?

This journey covers Grafana Cloud, its features and value. Grafana Cloud is:

- A **managed observability platform** built on the solid foundation of Grafana OSS
- The next step **when teams scale past what a self-managed setup can deliver** without significant operational overhead

Grafana Cloud is open by design:

- **Open source**: The same databases and query languages (PromQL, LogQL, TraceQL), run as a managed service.
- **Open standards**: Prometheus and OpenTelemetry are first-class. Your existing investments carry over.
- **Open ecosystem**: 100+ data sources and 50+ curated integrations for sending data from what you already have.
- **No lock-in**: Dashboards, alert rules, and telemetry use open formats. Leaving is a migration, not a rewrite.