Grafana vs Splunk: Open Source Stack or Quote-Based Data Platform
Prices and facts checked on vendor pages on Nov 8, 2026.
Grafana is an open source visualization and telemetry stack that also sells a metered cloud. Splunk is a data platform with search, security and observability products, mostly sold by quote. The first question is whether you need a SIEM and a sales-led contract, or a set of observability tools you can try for free and run yourself.
The Short Answer
Choose Grafana if your problem is dashboards, metrics and application telemetry, you like published unit prices, and you want an open source way out. Choose Splunk if you need security analytics or air-gapped search, or your company already buys through Splunk and wants one contract across security and IT.
Grafana vs Splunk at a Glance
How Grafana Charges
All figures are list prices checked Nov 8, 2026. Grafana Cloud Free costs nothing and includes 10,000 metric series, 50 GB each of logs, traces and profiles, and 14 days of retention. Pro adds a $19 monthly platform fee and then bills usage: metrics from $6.50 per 1,000 series, logs and traces from $0.05 to process, $0.40 to write and $0.10 to retain per GB, and Application Observability from $0.025 per host hour ($18 per host). Enterprise has a $25,000 yearly minimum commit and adds custom retention.
How Splunk Charges
Splunk offers four models. Ingest pricing counts gigabytes ingested, and Splunk says users and search activity add no cost. Workload pricing counts compute, measured in Splunk Virtual Compute (SVC) units on Cloud and vCPUs on Enterprise. Activity-based pricing meters both ingest and search, and is offered for Splunk Cloud Platform. Entity pricing counts monitored hosts, containers and protected devices and, per Splunk, allows unlimited data ingestion for the defined entities. Splunk also says it bills overages only when you consistently exceed purchased ingest or storage capacity.
Observability Cloud is where Splunk publishes numbers: Infrastructure from $15, App & Infra from $60, and End-to-End from $75, per host per month, billed annually. Everything else on the platform side is a quote.
A Host-Based Example
Take 20 hosts that need APM. Splunk App & Infra is 20 x $60 = $1,200 a month on annual billing, and entity pricing includes unlimited ingestion for those hosts. Grafana Application Observability at $18 a host is 20 x $18 = $360. The $19 platform fee covers 50 GB ingested a month, and data above that is pay as you go, so add your volume on top. The bundles are not identical, so treat the gap as a sign of how each vendor counts, not as a verdict.
Where They Really Differ
Scope. Splunk Enterprise Security lists SIEM, threat intelligence and detection engineering in both editions, with SOAR and UEBA in Premier. Grafana's products are observability, testing and AI products. If security analytics is on your list, that alone may decide it.
Deployment. Both can run in your own environment, in different shapes. Grafana is a set of separate open source services, so you choose which backends to operate. Splunk Enterprise is a single platform you license and install, and Splunk Cloud Platform is the managed version.
Log search. Loki indexes only label metadata and keeps log text in compressed chunks, which Grafana's docs credit for lower cost. Splunk searches with SPL. On Cloud, Splunk's AI Assistant app writes SPL from plain English, and Grafana Assistant answers questions and builds dashboards from a conversation.
Who pays per person. Splunk lists unlimited users on Cloud Platform and Enterprise. Grafana Cloud Pro includes 3 active users a month, then starts at $8 per active user ($55 with Enterprise plugins), and Assistant is priced at $20 per active AI user with 40M tokens included.
When to Pick Grafana
- You want dashboards across many data sources and open source projects you can adopt gradually.
- You want to see unit prices before talking to anyone.
- Your team is small and a free tier covers early production.
- You might move the backends in-house later.
When to Pick Splunk
- You need SIEM, SOAR or user behavior analytics next to your operational data.
- Your environment is air-gapped or fully on-premises.
- You prefer one negotiated contract, with Cloud Flex to shift spend between Splunk products.
- Your analysts already write SPL.
Where Sazabi Fits
Sazabi is AI-native observability and security that works beside either tool, so you don't have to rip out Grafana dashboards or Splunk searches to try it. Add it as an extra OTLP/HTTP exporter in an OpenTelemetry Collector and your existing destinations keep receiving data. Its agent investigates when you mention it in Slack and opens issues from what it finds. Read Sazabi vs Grafana, Sazabi vs Splunk, the Splunk alternatives page, and the OpenTelemetry integration.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Splunk publish prices the way Grafana does?
Only in part. Grafana lists per-unit rates for each signal and a $19 platform fee on Pro. Splunk lists host-based starting prices for Observability Cloud ($15, $60 and $75 per host per month, billed annually) and asks for a quote on Splunk Cloud Platform and Splunk Enterprise.
Can I run Grafana or Splunk entirely on my own infrastructure?
Yes for both. Grafana, Loki, Mimir and Tempo are open source and self-hostable. Splunk Enterprise deploys in a private cloud or on-prem, including air-gapped environments, and is priced by data ingest or workload.
Is Grafana a replacement for Splunk Enterprise Security?
The Grafana pricing page lists observability, testing and AI products and no SIEM. Splunk Enterprise Security lists SIEM in both of its editions, with SOAR and UEBA in Premier. If you need a SIEM, compare Splunk against security tools rather than against Grafana.
How does each tool query logs?
Grafana Loki is queried with LogQL, which is inspired by PromQL and uses labels and operators for filtering. Splunk uses SPL, and Splunk Cloud Platform customers can use the Splunk AI Assistant app to generate and explain SPL from natural language.
Sources
- Free, Pro and Enterprise plans, $19 platform fee, per-signal rates, host-hour rates, Assistant pricing, active user price, retention by plan (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Open source Grafana, Loki, Mimir, Tempo and Pyroscope projects (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Loki indexes only label metadata, stores compressed chunks in object stores, and is queried with LogQL, inspired by PromQL (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- OTLP ingest into Grafana Cloud or self-managed Loki, Mimir and Tempo; processing with Grafana Alloy or the OpenTelemetry Collector (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Grafana Assistant for troubleshooting and dashboards, in Grafana Cloud or self-managed Grafana connected to Grafana Cloud (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Splunk Platform and Observability Cloud pricing, host-based starting prices billed annually, Enterprise Security editions, FAQ on overages and volume discounts (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Ingest pricing adds users and search at no extra cost; entity pricing allows unlimited data ingestion for defined entities; workload and activity-based definitions (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Splunk Enterprise for on-premises and hybrid deployments (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Splunk Cloud Platform service, 14-day trial, Splunk AI Assistant app that generates SPL from natural language (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Native agents with human oversight and the Splunk Model Context Protocol (MCP) server (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Observability Cloud free edition for up to 15 hosts, host-based pricing and native OpenTelemetry support (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- AI Assistant in Observability Cloud: natural language questions and dashboards built with SignalFlow; free edition for up to 15 hosts; native OpenTelemetry support (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector receives, processes and exports metrics, traces and logs to Splunk Observability Cloud (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi plan prices, included usage and overage rates (accessed Nov 8, 2026)
- Sazabi as an additional OTLP/HTTP exporter in an OpenTelemetry Collector (accessed Nov 8, 2026)