Dynatrace vs. Grafana Cloud

See everything in one place, avoid vendor lock-in, and stop choosing between cost and visibility

AI-powered Grafana Cloud lets teams see all their systems in one place, stay free from lock-in, and manage costs with confidence.

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Why teams choose Grafana Cloud over Dynatrace

You shouldn’t have to pay a proprietary tax to see your own systems. With open-standard instrumentation instead of locked-in agents, teams move from constrained operators to flexible architects, connecting any data source, OpenTelemetry or otherwise.

Pay only for what you use

Control costs in real-time with Grafana’s usage-based pricing and Adaptive Telemetry tools so you can scale spending up or down and carry unused value into the future instead of losing it.

Freedom of choice. No vendor lock-in.

Ingest any data from any source, without proprietary agents or vendor delays,and keep your stack open and future-proof.

AI that acts across all your tools

Act on incidents end‑to‑end with AI and IRM, so detection, response, and coordination happen in one place instead of just generating alerts and handing them off to external tools.

“The thing that attracted me was the Grafana’s IRM…it’s leaps and leaps above what Dynatrace does. It calls the right people, notify the right people, record everything, and can start incidents automatically.”
Head of Site Reliability Engineers
Insurance company

Upgrade your observability on your own terms

Teams can connect their Dynatrace data into Grafana first, test and compare dashboards, and phase out agents later. No sudden cutovers, no lost visibility.

Comparing Grafana Cloud vs. Dynatrace

Capabilities
Rely on AI that works across your stack	Investigate anything with Grafana Assistant, so your workflows scale with your stack. Learn more	Rely on built-in AI that works only inside its own tools and can’t follow architectural changes.
Keep your spend flexible as your usage grows	Tune spend as you grow with usage-based pricing and Adaptive Telemetry so your budget moves with your business and not your contract. Learn more	Commit to a fixed annual fee that is hard to change when your usage or budget shifts.
Scale customizations across teams without slowing down	Build any dashboard you want using data from Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, or Mimir. Everything is editable through the interface or as code, so you can version and reuse your dashboards easily. Learn more	Edit JSON files and dashboards manually without AI or reusable templates to help.
Use open standards without vendor penalties	Instrument once with OpenTelemetry-native support and open collectors, so you get full coverage with zero vendor penalty. Learn more	Claim OpenTelemetry support but require proprietary agents for full functionality. Skip the OneAgent and you’ll pay steep penalties for ingesting third-party telemetry.
Control how your data is connected and interpreted	Correlate data yourself with shared labels and trace IDs so you can trust and tune every insight. Learn more	Accept auto-generated service maps you can’t view, verify, or refine.
Catch waste before it drives up your bill	Optimize continuously with Adaptive Metrics and real-time cost controls so you cut waste before it hits your bill. Learn more ->	Wait for renewals or manual quota changes and get penalized for overages you didn’t plan for.
Grow from small teams to scale without switching tools	Start free and scale when you need with one unified platform so you never outgrow your observability tool. Learn more ->	Rebuild pricing and architecture when your team size changes or overpay to stay.
Give every team the access they need without bottlenecks	Assign ownership dynamically so every team gets what they want without delays. Learn more ->	Manage permissions inside a closed system with limited delegation options.
Work with your alerting existing stack instead of rebuilding around someone else’s	Integrate instantly with cloud-native and open-source tools so your teams stay productive with what they already use. Learn more ->	Rebuild workflows when your tools change and struggle to connect beyond Dynatrace’s ecosystem.
Pay only for what you use	Pay only for what you store, query, and use with no agent fees or license minimums. Learn more ->	Pay upfront for licenses, agents, and retention, regardless of what you actually use.

Grafana Labs: A Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Observability Platforms

Gartner evaluated 20 vendors based on their Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision, and Grafana Labs was positioned furthest in Completeness of Vision.

Graph showing Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Observability Platforms.

^{Gartner®, Magic Quadrant™ for Observability Platforms, By Gregg Siegfried, Matt Crossley, Padraig Byrne, Andre Bridges, Martin Caren, 7 July 2025}

^{Gartner and Magic Quadrant are a trademark of Gartner, Inc., and/or its affiliates.}

^{Gartner does not endorse any company, vendor, product or service depicted in its publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s business and technology insights organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this publication, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.}

^{This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Grafana Labs.}