Focalboard
Grafana
| Feature | Focalboard | Grafana |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free only | Free / from $29/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4 / 5 | 4.6 / 5 |
| Best For | self-hosters, mattermost-users, small-teams, open-source-advocates | devops-teams, sre-teams, data-engineers, iot-monitoring |
| Founded | 2021 | 2014 |
| Kanban Boards | ✓ | ✗ |
| Table View | ✓ | ✗ |
| Calendar View | ✓ | ✗ |
| Templates | ✓ | ✗ |
| Filters | ✓ | ✗ |
| Self Hosting | ✓ | ✗ |
| Dashboards | ✗ | ✓ |
| Data Sources | ✗ | ✓ |
| Alerting | ✗ | ✓ |
| Annotations | ✗ | ✓ |
| Plugins | ✗ | ✓ |
| Loki Logs | ✗ | ✓ |
| Tempo Traces | ✗ | ✓ |
| Mimir Metrics | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ Focalboard Pros
- Completely free and open-source
- Self-hostable for data control
- Multiple view types (board, table, gallery)
- Integrates with Mattermost
✗ Focalboard Cons
- Limited to basic project tracking
- No built-in time tracking
- Smaller community than alternatives
✓ 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
Focalboard is built for self hosters and mattermost users, with a focus on kanban-boards and table-view. Grafana targets devops teams and sre teams and leads with dashboards and data-sources.
Focalboard uses custom enterprise pricing, while Grafana starts at $29/mo — a tangible advantage for teams with a fixed budget.
Both offer free plans, so you can test each with your real workflow before committing to a subscription.
Grafana edges out on user ratings (4.6 vs 4). While both are well-regarded, that gap reflects real differences in user satisfaction worth considering.
Feature-wise, Grafana offers broader built-in capabilities (8 features vs 6), while Focalboard takes a more focused approach — which can mean a simpler, faster onboarding experience.
Bottom line: Grafana has a slight overall edge — but if completely free and open-source matters most to you, Focalboard may still be the right call.