Grafana
Plausible Analytics
| Feature | Grafana | Plausible Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $29/mo | From $9/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| Rating | 4.6 / 5 | 4.6 / 5 |
| Best For | devops-teams, sre-teams, data-engineers, iot-monitoring | privacy-conscious-businesses, bloggers, developers, eu-businesses |
| Founded | 2014 | 2019 |
| Dashboards | ✓ | ✗ |
| Data Sources | ✓ | ✗ |
| Alerting | ✓ | ✗ |
| Annotations | ✓ | ✗ |
| Plugins | ✓ | ✗ |
| Loki Logs | ✓ | ✗ |
| Tempo Traces | ✓ | ✗ |
| Mimir Metrics | ✓ | ✗ |
| Pageviews | ✗ | ✓ |
| Referrers | ✗ | ✓ |
| Goals | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom Events | ✗ | ✓ |
| Utm Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Api | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self Hosting | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ 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
✓ Plausible Analytics Pros
- No cookies — GDPR compliant without consent banner
- Script is under 1KB (vs GA's 45KB)
- Open-source and transparent
- Simple dashboard — no overwhelming data
✗ Plausible Analytics Cons
- Less detailed than Google Analytics
- No free tier (but affordable)
- Limited segmentation and custom reports
The Verdict
Grafana is built for devops teams and sre teams, with a focus on dashboards and data-sources. Plausible Analytics targets privacy conscious businesses and bloggers and leads with pageviews and referrers.
On pricing, Plausible Analytics is the clear winner for budget-conscious users — starting at $9/mo compared to $29/mo for Grafana. That $20/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. Plausible Analytics requires a paid subscription from day one.
Feature-wise, Grafana offers broader built-in capabilities (8 features vs 7), while Plausible Analytics takes a more focused approach — which can mean a simpler, faster onboarding experience.
This is a genuinely close comparison. If you can, sign up for both free trials (where available) and run a one-week test with your actual team tasks before deciding.