Grafana vs Kibana: Which Dashboard Tool Fits Your Data
Prices and facts checked on vendor pages on Nov 8, 2026.
Grafana and Kibana both turn stored telemetry into charts, but they start from opposite ends. Kibana is the front end of the Elastic Stack and is built around Elasticsearch data. Grafana is a separate dashboard layer that reads from many stores, with Loki and Mimir as its own. Choosing between them is mostly choosing which data store and query language you want to live with.
The Short Answer
Pick Kibana if your data already sits in Elasticsearch and you want search, dashboards, security and alerting in one product. Pick Grafana if your data is spread across several stores, or you run Prometheus or Loki, or you want dashboards defined in code and kept in version control. If your logs are in Elasticsearch and your metrics are elsewhere, running both is common, because Grafana can query Elasticsearch directly.
Grafana vs Kibana at a Glance
What Each One Is Built On
Kibana does not store your data itself. The deployment docs call it the interface for Elastic solutions and Serverless projects, and say most use cases need it alongside Elasticsearch. Its dashboards are made of panels: Lens charts (the default editor), ES|QL panels, Discover sessions, Maps, Vega, alerts and machine learning views. You build a dashboard in the UI, through REST APIs, or through chat with Agent Builder.
Grafana does not store your telemetry either. A dashboard is panels, and each panel is a query plus a visualization sent to a data source plugin. The data source can be a SQL database, Loki, Mimir, an API endpoint or a CSV file. Transformations reshape results after the query, and variables make dashboards interactive. Grafana's open source page also describes deploying dashboards and alerts through your software pipeline, so monitoring ships with the service.
Querying and Dashboards
Kibana Discover offers two modes. ES|QL mode needs no data view, and classic mode uses data views with KQL or Lucene. Discover can also chart the results of an ES|QL query, and ES|QL panels sit on dashboards next to Lens charts. Everything is Elasticsearch, so one language skill covers search, dashboards and alert rules.
Grafana's language depends on the source. For logs in Loki you write LogQL, which is based on PromQL. Loki indexes the timestamp and labels but not the rest of each line, so you filter by label first and then by text. Explore is where you build and refine a query before it becomes a panel. If you use several stores, you will write more than one query language. In exchange, one dashboard can combine a Prometheus chart, a SQL table and a log panel.
Grafana can also sit on top of Elastic. Its preinstalled Elasticsearch data source runs Lucene, raw Query DSL and ES|QL, and supports annotations and alerting. That makes "Grafana or Kibana" a false choice for teams that already store logs in Elasticsearch but want mixed-source dashboards.
Alerting
Grafana Alerting builds rules from queries and expressions across multiple data sources, so one rule can compare a metric from one store with a log count from another. Kibana has two systems. Classic Alerting offers ready-made rule types for APM, metrics and uptime with form-based setup, and Universal Alerting defines the watch condition as an ES|QL query. Pick by where your signals are: one store favors Kibana, several favor Grafana.
What They Cost
Most of the cost sits in the store behind the dashboards. All figures are list prices checked on Nov 8, 2026.
Grafana Cloud has a free plan with 50 GB of logs a month and 14-day retention. Pro adds a $19 monthly platform fee that includes 50 GB ingested and 30 days of log retention, then bills logs at starting rates of $0.05 per GB processed, $0.40 per GB written and $0.10 per GB retained. Grafana Assistant starts at $20 per active AI user on Pro. Enterprise has a $25,000 per year minimum commit and lists Federal Cloud and Bring Your Own Cloud.
Elastic bills Observability Serverless on ingest, retention and egress. Logs Essentials lists as low as $0.07 per GB ingested and $0.017 per GB retained per month, with Complete at as low as $0.09 and $0.019. Egress is 50 GB free, then $0.05 per GB. The pricing page lists no separate Kibana charge.
Worked example: 200 GB of logs in a month. Grafana Pro, processing and writing only, is $19 + (200 - 50) x ($0.05 + $0.40) = $86.50, before the retain meter, because the pricing page does not say how retained volume is measured. Elastic Logs Essentials is 200 x $0.07 + 200 x $0.017 = $17.40 at its lowest rates. The two are not like for like: Grafana's figure covers the Loki log store and its 30-day plan, Elastic's covers Elasticsearch storage with Kibana included, and both depend on your discounts and measured volume.
Licensing
Elastic says Elasticsearch and Kibana source can be used under SSPL, Elastic License 2.0 or AGPLv3. Grafana says Loki is released under AGPLv3, and Grafana Enterprise is a commercial edition with extra data source plugins and features, some of which also come with paid Grafana Cloud. If your legal team restricts licenses, read both before adopting either.
When to Pick Grafana
- Your signals live in several stores and you want one dashboard over all of them.
- You run Prometheus or Loki already.
- You want dashboards and alerts in version control.
- You want a large free tier to start.
When to Pick Kibana
- Your logs and security data are in Elasticsearch.
- You want search, dashboards, maps, machine learning panels and alerting in one UI.
- Your team is already fluent in KQL or ES|QL.
- You want the option to self-manage under Elastic's licenses.
Where Sazabi Fits
Sazabi is AI-native observability and security that sits beside a dashboard tool, not in place of one. Its agent investigates in Slack and opens issues, and it can read your existing setup: the Grafana Cloud MCP connector lets it browse dashboards and run Prometheus and Loki queries, and the Elastic Cloud MCP connector reaches Elasticsearch through your Kibana endpoint. See Sazabi vs Grafana and Sazabi vs Elastic, or the Grafana integration and Elastic Cloud integration pages. Sazabi plans start at $50 per 30 days, listed on the pricing page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Grafana show data that lives in Elasticsearch?
Yes. Grafana ships an Elasticsearch data source preinstalled. It supports metrics and log queries with Lucene syntax, raw Query DSL, ES|QL, annotations and alerting, and works with Elasticsearch 7.17 or later and Elastic Cloud Serverless.
Is Kibana free?
Kibana source is available under SSPL, Elastic License 2.0 or AGPLv3, and you can self-manage it. In Elastic Cloud Serverless there is no separate Kibana line item on the Observability pricing page, which bills per GB ingested, retained and transferred.
Does Grafana store logs or only display them?
Grafana is the dashboard layer and queries data sources. Grafana Loki is its log store, which indexes labels and timestamps rather than the full text of each line. Grafana Cloud sells it as a managed service with processing, write and retention meters.
Which has better log search, Grafana or Kibana?
It depends on the store behind it. Kibana Discover searches Elasticsearch with KQL, Lucene or ES|QL. Grafana searches Loki with LogQL, and Explore lets you build queries before putting them on a dashboard.
Can I run Grafana and Kibana together?
Yes. Some teams keep Kibana for Elasticsearch exploration and use Grafana for dashboards that mix Elasticsearch with other sources, because Grafana can query Elasticsearch directly.
Sources
- Grafana dashboards, panels, data source plugins, transformations, variables, reporting and sharing (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Grafana OSS positioning, 150+ plugins and dashboards and alerts as code (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Explore as the starting point for ad hoc queries without building a dashboard (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Grafana's preinstalled Elasticsearch data source: Lucene, Query DSL, ES|QL, annotations and alerting (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Grafana Alerting across multiple data sources (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- LogQL, label-and-timestamp indexing in Loki, and how Explore is used to build queries (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Loki is released under AGPLv3 (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Grafana Enterprise adds data source plugins and features and is also partly available in paid Grafana Cloud (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Grafana Cloud Free, Pro and Enterprise plans, log meters, retention, Assistant pricing (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Grafana Assistant for dashboards and troubleshooting, and the features that need the full Grafana Cloud feature set (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Kibana dashboards, panels and building dashboards with the UI, REST APIs or AI (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Kibana panel types: Lens, ES|QL, Discover sessions, Maps, alerts, Vega and machine learning panels (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Discover searches with KQL, Lucene or ES|QL (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Kibana Classic Alerting and Universal Alerting, with ES|QL-based rules (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Kibana as the user interface for Elastic solutions and Serverless projects, and the deployment options (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Elasticsearch and Kibana source licenses: SSPL, Elastic License 2.0 and AGPLv3 (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Observability Serverless per-GB ingest, retention and egress rates (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi plan prices and included usage (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Grafana Cloud MCP connector: the Sazabi agent can browse dashboards and run Prometheus and Loki queries (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Elastic Cloud MCP connector hosted on your Kibana instance (accessed Nov 8, 2026)