Grafana
Pirsch
| Feature | Grafana | Pirsch |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $29/mo | From $4/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| Rating | 4.6 / 5 | 4.3 / 5 |
| Best For | devops-teams, sre-teams, data-engineers, iot-monitoring | privacy-focused-websites, european-businesses, bloggers, saas-companies |
| Founded | 2014 | 2021 |
| Dashboards | ✓ | ✗ |
| Data Sources | ✓ | ✗ |
| Alerting | ✓ | ✗ |
| Annotations | ✓ | ✗ |
| Plugins | ✓ | ✗ |
| Loki Logs | ✓ | ✗ |
| Tempo Traces | ✓ | ✗ |
| Mimir Metrics | ✓ | ✗ |
| Pageview Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Event Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Goals | ✗ | ✓ |
| Utm Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Server Side Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Api Access | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ 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
✓ Pirsch Pros
- No cookies required
- GDPR compliant out of the box
- Lightweight script (less than 1KB)
- Server-side tracking option
✗ Pirsch Cons
- No free plan
- Less detailed than GA4
- Limited e-commerce tracking
The Verdict
Grafana is built for devops teams and sre teams, with a focus on dashboards and data-sources. Pirsch targets privacy focused websites and european businesses and leads with pageview-tracking and event-tracking.
On pricing, Pirsch is the clear winner for budget-conscious users — starting at $4/mo compared to $29/mo for Grafana. That $25/mo difference adds up quickly for growing teams.
Grafana has a free plan, which gives it a meaningful edge for individuals and small teams exploring their options. Pirsch requires a paid subscription from day one.
Feature-wise, Grafana offers broader built-in capabilities (8 features vs 6), while Pirsch takes a more focused approach — which can mean a simpler, faster onboarding experience.
Bottom line: Grafana has a slight overall edge — but if no cookies required matters most to you, Pirsch may still be the right call.