Question 1

What is metrics billable series?

Accepted Answer

Metrics billable series is calculated based on two components: active series and data points per minute (DPM). By understanding these components, you’ll be able to better manage usage and reduce costs for your organization. See pricing docs –>

Question 2

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Question 3

How do you define process, write, retain, and query?

Accepted Answer

Process: The work done to receive, process and optimize the signals sent by your systems. Write: The work done to write only the useful data to the database. Retain: The work done to retain and protect your stored data over time. Query: The work done to query your stored data beyond the included fair-use ratio.

Question 4

Do you offer retention greater than 30 days?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we have additional retention options available. Contact us for more details.

Question 5

Do you offer discounts for higher usage?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Question 6

How do you define process, write, retain?

Accepted Answer

Process: The work done to receive, process and optimize the signals sent by your systems. Write: The work done to write only the useful data to the database. Retain: The work done to retain and protect your stored data over time.

Question 7

Do you offer retention greater than 30 days?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we have additional retention options available. Contact us for more details.

Question 8

Do you offer discounts for higher usage?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Question 9

How do you define process, write, retain?

Accepted Answer

Process: The work done to receive, process and optimize the signals sent by your systems. Write: The work done to write only the useful data to the database. Retain: The work done to retain and protect your stored data over time.

Question 10

Do you offer retention greater than 30 days?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we have additional retention options available. Contact us for more details.

Question 11

Do you offer discounts for higher usage?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Question 12

What exactly is a "Host Hour"?

Accepted Answer

A Host is any physical or virtual OS instance sending observability signals (including K8s metrics). It is considered active if it has sent a signal in the last 15 minutes. Your bill is the sum of these active hours throughout the month—meaning you don’t pay for hosts that are spun down over the weekend or during off-peak hours.

Question 13

When does host hour pricing apply?

Accepted Answer

Host hour billing applies when you opt into the curated experience built off the raw telemetry data. Alternatively, you can opt out of the curated experience and be billed solely based on telemetry storage.

Question 14

How is this different from included telemetry pricing model?

Accepted Answer

We made this change to give customers more control on telemetry usage and costs. Customers can now use adaptive telemetry to reduce the unused / unwanted telemetry and lower their overall costs. Read more in the documentation .

Question 15

What exactly is a "Host Hour"?

Accepted Answer

A Host is any physical or virtual OS instance sending observability signals (including K8s metrics). It is considered active if it has sent a signal in the last 15 minutes. Your bill is the sum of these active hours throughout the month—meaning you don’t pay for hosts that are spun down over the weekend or during off-peak hours.

Question 16

When does host hour pricing apply?

Accepted Answer

Host hour billing applies when you opt into the curated experience built off the raw telemetry data. Alternatively, you can opt out of the curated experience and be billed solely based on telemetry storage.

Question 17

How is this different from included telemetry pricing model?

Accepted Answer

We made this change to give customers more control on telemetry usage and costs. Customers can now use adaptive telemetry to reduce the unused / unwanted telemetry and lower their overall costs.

Question 18

How is this different from included telemetry pricing model?

Accepted Answer

We made this change to give customers more control on telemetry usage and costs. Customers can now use adaptive telemetry to reduce the unused / unwanted telemetry and lower their overall costs.

Question 19

What is a session?

Accepted Answer

A “session” is defined as the time that a user is spending in a frontend application on and off from start to finish or timeout. A user session is either created or resumed when a user visits and uses the site. A user session ends after a maximum lifetime of 4 hours or after inactivity timeout of 15 minutes. The SDK will automatically create a new user session in any of these situations, if the user returns.

Question 20

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Question 21

What exactly is a "Host Hour" for Database Observability?

Accepted Answer

A database host is any database instance sending monitoring data to Grafana Cloud. It is considered active if it has sent data in the last 15 minutes. Your bill is the sum of active host hours throughout the month, meaning you don’t pay for database instances that are spun down over the weekend or during off-peak hours.

Question 22

What counts as a database host?

Accepted Answer

Each database server instance counts as one database host – for example, each MySQL or PostgreSQL server, each RDS or Cloud SQL instance, or each node in a database cluster. If you run multiple database instances on a single machine, each instance is counted separately.

Question 23

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Question 24

What telemetry costs should I expect?

Accepted Answer

Database Observability generates metrics and logs that are stored in Grafana Cloud. These are billed at standard Grafana Cloud rates for metrics and logs, separate from your host hour usage. You can control telemetry volume by adjusting your collection configuration in Grafana Alloy.

Question 25

What is an active AI user?

Accepted Answer

An active AI user is anyone who uses Grafana Assistant during the monthly billing period — sending a message, clicking an action like Explain in Assistant, or working with Assistant through any of its surfaces: in Grafana or Workspace, in Slack or Microsoft Teams, in the Grafana mobile or desktop app, or through the gcx CLI. Connecting through the Cloud MCP server also counts as active use. Running an Assistant Automation manually, or having one run automatically, also counts as active use. Each active user includes up to 40M tokens per month. Additional usage is charged at $2 per 1M tokens. Token limits apply per user and are not shared across users.

Question 26

What consumes my tokens?

Accepted Answer

Token consumption falls into two buckets: Your per-user tokens (40M per user per month) cover everything you do with Assistant manually — conversations in any surface, Assistant Search, dashboard and query generation, investigations you start, and any prompts or questions you send within a system-initiated investigation. A manual Assistant Automation run counts toward the token usage of the user who starts it. Scheduled and event-triggered runs count toward the creator’s token usage. The system-initiated pool (25M per month on Free and Pro; custom pools on contracted plans) covers all other AI work that runs automatically — investigations triggered by alerts, incidents, or IRM webhooks, LLM-based evals and guards from Agent Observability, and service-account or API usage. Watcher agents are free while in public preview. Once a pool is used, additional tokens are billed at $2 per 1M.

Question 27

What is the system-initiated usage?

Accepted Answer

Tokens consumed by system-initiated AI activity — investigations triggered automatically by alerts, incidents, watchers or IRM webhooks, LLM-based evals and guards, and service-account or API usage — draw from a shared monthly pool: 25M tokens on Free and Pro plans, with custom pool sizes on contracted plans, separate from per-user allowances. The pool is shared across all system-initiated AI usage in your organization. Assistant Automations are the exception: scheduled and event-triggered runs draw from their creator’s per-user tokens, not this pool. (This pool replaces the 25M tokens previously described as “service account usage.”)

Question 28

Does using gcx or the Grafana MCP server consume my tokens?

Accepted Answer

Not for data access. When your own coding agent or MCP client uses gcx or the Cloud MCP server to query Grafana — pulling metrics, dashboards, alerts, or incidents — the reasoning happens in your agent’s model, and no Grafana AI tokens are consumed. Grafana tokens are consumed when Grafana’s models do the work: chatting with Assistant through the gcx CLI, invoking Assistant tools like ask_assistant through MCP, or starting an investigation from either surface. One thing to know: connecting through the Cloud MCP server counts you as an active AI user for that billing period, even if your token usage is zero.

Question 29

Does Assistant Search consume my tokens?

Accepted Answer

Searching itself doesn’t. The retrieval — semantic and keyword search across your dashboards, incidents, investigations, alert rules, and infrastructure — runs on Grafana’s search index, not an AI model, and consumes no tokens. Tokens are consumed by the AI work around a search: a small amount to rewrite your query for better results, and — the bulk of it — when Assistant reasons over what comes back, either as part of its reply in chat or through Deep Search’s enrichment, which runs a full Assistant pass on each new search. There is no separate search-token pool; this usage draws from the same allowances as the rest of Assistant.

Question 30

What is an AI token?

Accepted Answer

A token is a piece of text that an AI model reads or generates. Tokens can be whole words, parts of words, punctuation, or spaces. As a rough rule of thumb: 1 token ≈ 4 characters in English; 100 tokens ≈ 75 words. Tokens can be consumed by active AI users and by system-initiated usage; system-initiated usage is not billed per user.

Question 31

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage (note: discounts do not apply to tokens) . Contact us for more details. Contact us for more details.

Question 32

What is an investigation?

Accepted Answer

An investigation is a longer, deeper task you hand to Grafana Assistant: point it at an alert, incident, or question, and it forms hypotheses, dispatches sub-agents to prove or disprove them against your telemetry, and produces a structured report with findings, supporting evidence, and recommended next steps.

Question 33

How are investigations billed?

Accepted Answer

Investigations are billed by the tokens they consume — there is no per-investigation or per-seat charge. Investigations you start yourself count toward your per-user Grafana Assistant allowance (40M tokens per user per month). Investigations triggered automatically — by alerts, incident updates, watchers or IRM webhooks — count toward the system-initiated token pool (25M tokens per month included). If you send prompts or questions within an automatically triggered investigation, those interactions count toward your per-user allowance. Beyond your included allowances, additional tokens are billed at $2 per 1M.

Question 34

What is the system-initiated usage?

Accepted Answer

Tokens consumed by system-initiated AI activity — investigations triggered automatically by alerts, incidents, or IRM webhooks, LLM-based evals and guards, and service-account or API usage — draw from a shared monthly pool: 25M tokens on Free and Pro plans, with custom pool sizes on contracted plans, separate from per-user allowances. The pool is shared across all system-initiated AI usage in your organization. Assistant Automations are the exception: scheduled and event-triggered runs draw from their creator’s per-user tokens, not this pool. (This pool replaces the 25M tokens previously described as “service account usage.”)

Question 35

How many tokens does an investigation use?

Accepted Answer

It depends on the scope of the problem and the effort level you choose — deeper investigations explore more hypotheses and query more data.

Question 36

What is a token?

Accepted Answer

A token is a piece of text that an AI model reads or generates. Tokens can be whole words, parts of words, punctuation, or spaces. As a rough rule of thumb: 1 token ≈ 4 characters in English; 100 tokens ≈ 75 words.

Question 37

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage (note: discounts do not apply to tokens) . Contact us for more details. Contact us for more details.

Question 38

What is a generation?

Accepted Answer

A generation is a single call to an AI model — one request and response — captured by Agent Observability. Agents typically produce multiple generations per user interaction: planning steps, tool selections, and final answers each count as one generation.

Question 39

When am I charged for tokens?

Accepted Answer

Token charges apply only to Evals & Guards that use an LLM to score or screen your application’s outputs (for example, LLM-as-judge evaluators). These tokens count toward your system-initiated token pool (25M tokens per month included); once the pool is used, additional tokens are billed at $2 per 1M. Evals and guards that run static checks — schema validation, regex, heuristics — consume no tokens and incur no token charge.

Question 40

What is the system-initiated usage?

Accepted Answer

Tokens consumed by system-initiated AI activity — investigations triggered automatically by alerts, incidents, or IRM webhooks, LLM-based evals and guards, and service-account or API usage — draw from a shared monthly pool: 25M tokens on Free and Pro plans, with custom pool sizes on contracted plans, separate from per-user allowances. The pool is shared across all system-initiated AI usage in your organization. Assistant Automations are the exception: scheduled and event-triggered runs draw from their creator’s per-user tokens, not this pool. (This pool replaces the 25M tokens previously described as “service account usage.”)

Question 41

What is a token?

Accepted Answer

A token is a piece of text that an AI model reads or generates. Tokens can be whole words, parts of words, punctuation, or spaces. As a rough rule of thumb: 1 token ≈ 4 characters in English; 100 tokens ≈ 75 words.

Question 42

Is my AI application telemetry included?

Accepted Answer

Traces, logs, and metrics generated by your AI applications are stored in Grafana Cloud and billed at standard Grafana Cloud rates, separate from generations. You can control telemetry volume through your instrumentation and collection configuration.

Question 43

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage (note: discounts do not apply to tokens) . Contact us for more details. Contact us for more details.

Question 44

What is a test execution?

Accepted Answer

A test execution is a Synthetic test running in a probe location per minute of run time. Example: A synthetic test running in 5 locations that takes 1.5 minutes to complete will consume 10 executions each time it runs.

Question 45

How do I estimate the number of test executions?

Accepted Answer

To estimate the number of test executions per month, you will need the following inputs: Number of Locations (Probes) Number of Targets (Tests) Duration of Test (rounded to the nearest minute) Frequency of Tests (in Minutes) Using the above info, you can calculate the number of test executions per month by applying this formula (where 43,200 is the total minutes in a month): probes x tests x duration x (43,200 / frequency)

Question 46

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Question 47

What is a test execution?

Accepted Answer

A test execution is a Synthetic test running in a probe location per minute of run time. Example: A synthetic test running in 5 locations that takes 1.5 minutes to complete will consume 10 executions each time it runs.

Question 48

What are MultiHTTP checks and k6 scripted checks?

Accepted Answer

MultiHTTP checks are like HTTP checks but you can test multiple URLs in a single check to validate multi-step user flows. k6 scripted checks are like MultiHTTP checks, but you can write the checks in code instead of via a form-based approach.

Question 49

How do I estimate the number of test executions?

Accepted Answer

To estimate the number of test executions per month, you will need the following inputs: Number of Locations (Probes) Number of Targets (Tests) Duration of Test (rounded to the nearest minute) Frequency of Tests (in Minutes) Using the above info, you can calculate the number of test executions per month by applying this formula: # of locations (probes) X number of targets (tests) X duration of test (rounded up to the nearest minute) X [43,200 total minutes in a month / frequency of tests in minutes)

Question 50

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Question 51

What is a virtual user hour (VUh)?

Accepted Answer

VUh is calculated by using the following formula: (Maximum number of VUs x test execution duration in minutes) / 60 minutes = VUh If your test ramps up to a maximum of 100 VUs and runs for 10 minutes, the test run will use 16.67 VUh ((100 VUs x 10 minutes)/60 = 16.67 VUh). Note that VU hours are calculated based on the period that the test run executes, not the preconfigured test duration. If the test duration is 2 or more hours but runs for only 30.01 minutes, then the subscription will be charged for the test-execution period rounded up to the next minute (in this case, 31 minutes). The minimum for a test is 1 VUh. Find additional details here .

Question 52

What limitations are there in the free tier?

Accepted Answer

Both the free tier and free trial period are limited to 500 VUh / month.

Question 53

How can I calculate how many VUH my tests will consume?

Accepted Answer

With our public calculator , you can model your testing workload and estimate the monthly and yearly consumption of VUH.

Question 54

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Question 55

What is a Grafana active user?

Accepted Answer

Any user that logs into Grafana during the billing month is considered an active user.

Question 56

Does the Cloud Pro Pay As You Go plan include Enterprise plugins?

Accepted Answer

Enterprise plugins are a paid add-on for the Cloud Pro Pay As You Go Plan that is priced at $55 per active user per month. By default, your account will have Grafana without Enterprise plugins, which is priced at $8 per active user per month.

Question 57

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Question 58

What is a Grafana active user?

Accepted Answer

Any user that logs into Grafana during the billing month is considered an active user.

Question 59

Does the Cloud Pro Pay As You Go plan include Enterprise plugins?

Accepted Answer

Enterprise plugins are a paid add-on for the Cloud Pro Pay As You Go Plan that is priced at $55 per active user per month. By default, your account will have Grafana without Enterprise plugins, which is priced at $8 per active user per month.

Question 60

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Question 61

What is an IRM active user?

Accepted Answer

An active IRM user is defined as a user who is included in OnCall schedules or escalation chains or performs any of the following actions: Changed the status of an alert group or OnCall configuration Received a page or paged another user Created, edited, or updated an incident

Question 62

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Accepted Answer

Yes, we provide volume discounts for enterprise-scale usage. Contact us for more details.

Send more, charge more is broken. We are changing it.

Pricing philosophy

Adaptive

Scalable pricing

Composable

Estimate your Grafana Cloud cost

Product pricing

Metrics

Optimize metrics by up to 80%

Pay only for what you use

FAQ

What is metrics billable series?

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Logs

Optimize log ingest by up to 50%

Pay only for what you use

FAQ

How do you define process, write, retain, and query?

Do you offer retention greater than 30 days?

Do you offer discounts for higher usage?

Traces

FAQ

How do you define process, write, retain?

Do you offer retention greater than 30 days?

Do you offer discounts for higher usage?

Profiles

FAQ

How do you define process, write, retain?

Do you offer retention greater than 30 days?

Do you offer discounts for higher usage?

Kubernetes Monitoring

FAQ

What exactly is a "Host Hour"?

When does host hour pricing apply?

How is this different from included telemetry pricing model?

Application Observability

FAQ

What exactly is a "Host Hour"?

When does host hour pricing apply?

How is this different from included telemetry pricing model?

Frontend Observability

FAQ

How is this different from included telemetry pricing model?

What is a session?

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Database Observability

FAQ

What exactly is a "Host Hour" for Database Observability?

What counts as a database host?

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

What telemetry costs should I expect?

Grafana Assistant

FAQ

What is an active AI user?

What consumes my tokens?

What is the system-initiated usage?

Does using gcx or the Grafana MCP server consume my tokens?

Does Assistant Search consume my tokens?

What is an AI token?

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Investigations

FAQ

What is an investigation?

How are investigations billed?

What is the system-initiated usage?

How many tokens does an investigation use?

What is a token?

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Agent Observability

FAQ

What is a generation?

When am I charged for tokens?

What is the system-initiated usage?

What is a token?

Is my AI application telemetry included?

Do you provide discounts for higher usage volumes?

Synthetics API Testing

FAQ

What is a test execution?

How do I estimate the number of test executions?