Grafana Cloud vs SigNoz
Observability Platforms pricing comparison · 2026
Grafana Cloud pricing ranges from $0–$55/month, while SigNoz ranges from $0–$4000/month. These products use different pricing models ( vs Per-seat subscription), so a direct price comparison isn't meaningful — costs depend on usage volume and mix.
Grafana Cloud and SigNoz are both modern observability platforms built on open-source foundations, but with different business models. Grafana Cloud is the managed cloud offering from Grafana Labs (the company behind Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Tempo) with a generous free tier and pay-as-you-go pricing. SigNoz is an open-source observability platform (OpenTelemetry-native) with a free self-hosted option and a managed cloud starting at $49/month. Both offer metrics, logs, and traces in a single platform.
Plan-by-Plan Pricing
| Plan | Grafana Cloud | SigNoz |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free /month | Free /free |
| Pro | $19 /active user/month | $49 /month base + usage |
| Advanced | $55 /active user/month | $4K /month (starting) |
| Enterprise | Custom | — |
Our Verdict
Choose Grafana Cloud if you want the most mature ecosystem with Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, and Pyroscope under one roof, need extensive dashboard and alerting capabilities, or want a managed service backed by the company that created most of the underlying open-source tools. The free tier (10K metrics, 50GB logs, 50GB traces) is generous for small teams.
Choose SigNoz if OpenTelemetry standardization is a priority, you want to avoid vendor lock-in on telemetry formats, need to self-host for compliance reasons (SigNoz is fully self-hostable for free), or want a more opinionated observability workflow built around traces-first debugging.
Frequently Asked Questions
01 Is SigNoz free compared to Grafana Cloud?
SigNoz Community (self-hosted) is completely free with no feature limits—you only pay for your own infrastructure. Grafana Cloud offers a free tier with limits (10K series, 50GB logs/traces). For production-scale self-hosted observability, SigNoz has a significant cost advantage. Grafana Cloud's managed convenience has a price starting at $19/month.
02 Which is easier to set up?
Grafana Cloud is easier to start—sign up and start sending metrics in minutes with pre-built integrations for 200+ systems. SigNoz self-hosted requires Docker/Kubernetes setup, though their documentation is excellent. SigNoz Cloud ($49/month) is as easy as Grafana Cloud to set up.
03 Do both support OpenTelemetry?
Yes. Both Grafana Cloud and SigNoz are OpenTelemetry-compatible. SigNoz is built OpenTelemetry-first and uses the OTel Collector as its data ingestion layer. Grafana Cloud supports OTel alongside its own Grafana Agent. For fully OTel-native deployments, SigNoz is the stronger architectural fit.