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Grafana OSS

What you get

Grafana OSS is free, open source software that provides:

  • Dashboards with variables, annotations, and dozens of visualization types
  • Alerting with notification channels (email, Slack, PagerDuty, and more)
  • A query editor and Explore mode for ad-hoc data investigation
  • A plugin framework with hundreds of community data sources and panels
  • Configuration through files, environment variables, or provisioning scripts

Note: You can also use Grafana Assistant, the purpose-built AI assistant, with self-hosted Grafana OSS. Install the Assistant plugin and connect a free or paid Grafana Cloud account: the assistant runs in your instance while its backend stays in Grafana Cloud.

What you don’t get

The free edition leaves out a few things:

  • No official support. Community forums are the primary help channel.
  • No enterprise governance features
  • No managed infrastructure. You run and operate everything yourself.

The cost of running it yourself

Free to license doesn’t mean free to run. Self-hosting OSS carries real, ongoing costs:

Cost typeWhat it looks like
InfrastructureSetup, configuration, scaling, and ongoing maintenance at scale
EngineeringFull-time engineers (FTEs) dedicated to installation, administration, and upgrades, instead of product work
OpportunityInnovation slows when engineers keep the lights on rather than ship features
DowntimeNo guaranteed SLAs or 24/7 support, and the risk of running blind during an incident

Best for

Individuals and small teams comfortable managing infrastructure, with no need for commercial support.

Get started

Download Grafana OSS and follow the installation guide.

Script

Grafana OSS is the free, open source foundation: dashboards, alerting, a query editor, and hundreds of community data source plugins. But free to license doesn’t mean free to run. You take on the infrastructure, the engineering time to operate it, and the risk that comes with no guaranteed SLA or 24/7 support.
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