Dynatrace vs Grafana Cloud
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Dynatrace and Grafana Cloud.
Quick Verdict
3.8/5
Dynatrace
0 reviews
3.9/5
Grafana Cloud
0 reviews
Grafana Cloud is rated higher (3.9 vs 3.8). Dynatrace uses Davis AI to automatically detect problems, root causes, and dependencies across your full technology stack. Full-stack observability with minimal manual configuration. Grafana Cloud provides managed Grafana, Prometheus, Loki (logs), Tempo (traces), and k6 (load testing). Free tier includes 10,000 metrics series. Open source self-hosting also available.
Dynatrace AI-powered observability and AIOps platform | Grafana Cloud Open source observability platform — cloud and self-hosted | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.8 (0 reviews) | 3.9 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Starting price | From $7/mo | Free tier available✓ |
| Best for | Large enterprise teams wanting AI-driven automatic problem detection across their entire technology stack, where incident cost justifies platform spend | Teams wanting a managed, self-hostable observability stack with a genuinely useful free tier and metrics, logs, and traces under one pane |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ✓ | |
| Snapshots | ✓ | |
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | api accessteam featuressso | free tieropen sourceself hostableapi accessteam features |
| Visit Dynatrace → | Visit Grafana Cloud → | |
Dynatrace
Pros
- + Davis causal AI and OneAgent auto-discovery replace manual alert wiring with root-cause answers
- + Single platform for APM, infrastructure, logs, RUM, synthetics and runtime security
- + Published rate card with no per-seat fees and no overage premiums on DPS commitments
- + Deep compliance packaging (ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, FedRAMP Moderate, HIPAA) and unlimited seats
- + 900+ supported technologies, OpenTelemetry ingest, hybrid and mainframe coverage
Cons
- - Expensive: annual commitment required, bills scale with host memory (4 GiB floor)
- - No permanent free plan (15-day trial) and no month-to-month option
- - Capability sprawl means many meters to forecast; renewal conversations get complex
- - SaaS-only — no self-hosted deployment for strict data-residency or air-gapped environments
Grafana Cloud
Pros
- + Open source core (AGPLv3) across Grafana/Mimir/Loki/Tempo/Pyroscope — a real self-host exit
- + Permanent free tier: 10k metric series, 50 GB logs/traces/profiles, 500 k6 VUh, no credit card
- + Public Pro pricing ($19/mo platform fee, from $6.50/1k series) with automatic volume discounts
- + 42 stack regions on AWS, Azure, and GCP including a Federal Cloud option
Cons
- - Usage-based billing punishes metric cardinality and log verbosity — bills can spike on app-side mistakes
- - PromQL/LogQL and label design have a real learning curve
- - SLA is 99.5% (paid plans only) — below hyperscaler commitments
- - Some enterprise RBAC/audit/reporting features require a quote-based Enterprise plan
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