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Grafana

Topic: Software

 From HandWiki - Reading time: 4 min

Grafana
Grafana dashboard for a MusicBrainz server
Developer(s)Grafana Labs
Initial releaseJanuary 2014; 12 years ago (2014-01)
Repositorygithub.com/grafana/grafana
Written inGo (backend), TypeScript (frontend)[1]
Operating systemLinux, macOS, Windows
TypeData visualization, business intelligence
LicenseAGPLv3[2]
Websitegrafana.com

Grafana is an open-source analytics and visualization web application. It connects to time series databases and other data sources, allowing users to build dashboards that display metrics, logs, and traces. Grafana supports data sources including Prometheus, AWS CloudWatch, Graphite, InfluxDB, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.[3]

Torkel Odegaard released Grafana in January 2014 as an outgrowth of work on Graphite at Orbitz. The user interface was originally based on version 3 of Kibana.[4] The company behind the project, initially named Raintank, rebranded as Grafana Labs and has raised over $500 million in venture capital funding, reaching a $6 billion valuation in 2024.[5]

Since 2021, Grafana has been licensed under the AGPLv3 (previously Apache 2.0).[2] A commercial Grafana Enterprise edition adds features including LDAP team synchronization, data source permissions, and reporting.[6]

History

Grafana was first released in January 2014, initially targeting Graphite and InfluxDB as data sources. It later added support for relational databases including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Microsoft SQL Server.[7]

Grafana Labs was founded in 2014 as Raintank and later adopted the Grafana name.[8] The company raised $24 million in Series A funding in 2019,[9] $50 million in Series B in 2020,[10] $220 million in Series C in 2021 (at a $3 billion valuation),[11] and $270 million in 2024 at a $6 billion valuation.[5]

Grafana Labs acquired several companies to expand its observability stack: Kausal (2018),[12] k6 (2021, load testing),[13] Amixr (2021, incident response),[14] Pyroscope (2023, continuous profiling),[15] Asserts.ai (2023, AI-assisted observability),[16] and TailCtrl (2024, trace sampling).[17]

Architecture

Grafana's backend is written in Go and its frontend in TypeScript using React.[1] The application runs as a single binary that serves a web interface and connects to external data sources through a plugin system. Plugins fall into three categories: data source plugins (for querying backends), panel plugins (for visualization types), and app plugins (for bundled functionality).[6]

Grafana does not store metrics data itself. It queries external data sources at render time and can combine data from multiple sources in a single dashboard. Built-in data source support includes Prometheus, Graphite, InfluxDB, Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Loki, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Splunk.[3]

Dashboards are defined as JSON documents and can be provisioned from files, version-controlled, and shared via Grafana's public dashboard library. Alerting rules can be defined against any data source, with notifications routed to email, Slack, PagerDuty, and other channels.[6]

LGTM Stack

Grafana Labs develops a set of open-source backends that are often deployed together as the "LGTM Stack" (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir):[18]

  • Loki -- a log aggregation system, first released in 2019, that indexes metadata rather than full log text.[19]
  • Mimir -- a horizontally scalable, Prometheus-compatible metrics backend, released in 2022 as a replacement for Cortex.[20]
  • Tempo -- a distributed tracing backend, released in 2021.[21]
  • Pyroscope -- a continuous profiling backend, released in 2023.[22]

Adoption

Grafana is used by Wikimedia's infrastructure,[23] NASA,[24] and the Tour de France (for real-time race telemetry).[24] As of 2025, Grafana Labs reported over 25 million users[25] and 7,000 paying customers, including Nvidia, Anthropic, and Uber,[24]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Synopsys. "The grafana Open Source Project on Open Hub: Languages Page". Open Hub. https://www.openhub.net/p/grafana/analyses/latest/languages_summary. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Dutt, Raj (April 20, 2021). "Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3". https://grafana.com/blog/2021/04/20/grafana-loki-tempo-relicensing-to-agplv3/. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Anadiotis, George. "DevOps and observability in the 2020s". https://www.zdnet.com/article/devops-and-observability-in-the-2020s/. 
  4. ↑ Odegaard, Torkel (September 3, 2019). "The (Mostly) Complete History of Grafana UX". https://grafana.com/blog/2019/09/03/the-mostly-complete-history-of-grafana-ux/. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Lardinois, Frederic (August 21, 2024). "Grafana Labs raises $270M". https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/21/grafana-labs-is-now-valued-at-6b/. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Grafana Enterprise Stack". Grafana Labs. https://grafana.com/products/enterprise/. 
  7. ↑ "MySQL data source". https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/datasources/mysql/. 
  8. ↑ "'The Story of Grafana' documentary: The business of open source". https://grafana.com/blog/the-story-of-grafana-documentary-the-business-of-open-source/. 
  9. ↑ Anadiotis, George. "Grafana Labs scores $24M Series A funding". https://www.zdnet.com/article/is-open-source-the-way-to-go-for-observability-grafana-labs-scores-24m-series-a-funding-to-try-to-prove-this/. 
  10. ↑ Grafana (August 17, 2020). "Grafana Labs Raises $50 Million". GlobeNewswire (Press release). Retrieved July 23, 2021.
  11. ↑ "Grafana Labs Raises $220 Million Round at $3 Billion Valuation". August 24, 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-24/grafana-labs-raises-220-million-round-at-3-billion-valuation. 
  12. ↑ "Kausal to join Grafana Labs". March 10, 2018. https://kausal.co/blog/grafana-labs-to-acquire-kausal/. 
  13. ↑ "Grafana Labs acquires load-testing startup K6". June 17, 2021. https://venturebeat.com/2021/06/17/grafana-labs-acquires-load-testing-startup-k6/. 
  14. ↑ "Grafana Labs Previews Future of Observability at ObservabilityCON 2021" (Press release). Grafana Labs. November 9, 2021. Retrieved April 28, 2026.
  15. ↑ Lardinois, Frederic (March 15, 2023). "Grafana acquires Pyroscope". https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/15/grafana-acquires-pyroscope-and-merges-it-with-its-phlare-continuous-profiling-database/. 
  16. ↑ "Grafana Labs acquires AI startup Asserts.ai". November 14, 2023. https://siliconangle.com/2023/11/14/grafana-labs-acquires-ai-startup-asserts-ai-ease-application-observability-headaches/. 
  17. ↑ "Grafana Labs acquires TailCtrl". https://grafana.com/blog/grafana-labs-acquires-tailctrl/. 
  18. ↑ Nerkar, Prashant (March 28, 2024). "Building an Open Source Observability Platform". https://devops.com/building-an-open-source-observability-platform/. 
  19. ↑ Lobo, Savia (November 20, 2019). "Grafana Labs announces general availability of Loki 1.0". https://hub.packtpub.com/grafana-labs-announces-general-availability-of-loki-1-0-a-multi-tenant-log-aggregation-system/. 
  20. ↑ Gain, B. Cameron (August 10, 2022). "The Great Grafana Mimir and Cortex Split". https://thenewstack.io/the-great-grafana-mimir-and-cortex-split/. 
  21. ↑ Deutscher, Maria (June 8, 2021). "Grafana Labs eases IT monitoring with Tempo tracing tool". https://siliconangle.com/2021/06/08/grafana-labs-eases-monitoring-tempo-tracing-tool-new-grafana-release/. 
  22. ↑ Vizard, Mike (August 31, 2023). "Grafana Labs Delivers Open Source Code Profiling Tool". https://devops.com/grafana-labs-delivers-open-source-code-profiling-tool/. 
  23. ↑ "grafana.wikimedia.org". Wikitech. https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grafana.wikimedia.org. 
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 Nieva, Richard (September 30, 2025). "Grafana Labs Is Cleaning Up On The Vibe Coding Boom". https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2025/09/30/grafana-labs-revenue-tender-offer/. 
  25. ↑ "Grafana Labs named a Leader again in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Observability Platforms" (in en). https://grafana.com/blog/grafana-labs-named-a-leader-again-in-the-2025-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-observability-platforms/. 



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