Evidence
Grafana
| Feature | Evidence | Grafana |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $49/mo | Free / from $29/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4.3 / 5 | 4.6 / 5 |
| Best For | data-analysts, data-engineers, startups, analytics-teams | devops-teams, sre-teams, data-engineers, iot-monitoring |
| Founded | 2021 | 2014 |
| Sql Reporting | ✓ | ✗ |
| Markdown Pages | ✓ | ✗ |
| Charts | ✓ | ✗ |
| Static Deployment | ✓ | ✗ |
| Git Integration | ✓ | ✗ |
| Data Sources | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dashboards | ✗ | ✓ |
| Alerting | ✗ | ✓ |
| Annotations | ✗ | ✓ |
| Plugins | ✗ | ✓ |
| Loki Logs | ✗ | ✓ |
| Tempo Traces | ✗ | ✓ |
| Mimir Metrics | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ Evidence Pros
- Code-based reports (version controlled)
- Beautiful output
- Fast static deployment
- SQL-first approach
✗ Evidence Cons
- Requires SQL knowledge
- Not for ad-hoc exploration
- Smaller community
✓ Grafana Pros
- Connects to virtually any data source
- Beautiful and highly customizable dashboards
- Open-source with massive community
- Grafana Cloud includes Loki, Tempo, and Mimir
- Alerting across all data sources
✗ Grafana Cons
- Self-hosting requires DevOps expertise
- Dashboard creation has a learning curve
- Plugin quality varies
The Verdict
Evidence is built for data analysts and data engineers, with a focus on sql-reporting and markdown-pages. Grafana targets devops teams and sre teams and leads with dashboards and data-sources.
On pricing, Grafana is the clear winner for budget-conscious users — starting at $29/mo compared to $49/mo for Evidence. That $20/mo difference adds up quickly for growing teams.
Both offer free plans, so you can test each with your real workflow before committing to a subscription.
Feature-wise, Grafana offers broader built-in capabilities (8 features vs 6), while Evidence takes a more focused approach — which can mean a simpler, faster onboarding experience.
Both tools are a solid fit for data engineers — in those cases, the decision often comes down to workflow style and how your team prefers to organize work.
Bottom line: Grafana has a slight overall edge — but if code-based reports (version controlled) matters most to you, Evidence may still be the right call.