Grafana

Grafana
DeveloperGrafana Labs
Initial releaseJanuary 2014 (2014-01)
Stable release
12.4.0[1] / 24 February 2026 (24 February 2026)
Written inGo (backend), TypeScript (frontend)[2]
Operating systemLinux, macOS, Windows
TypeData visualization, business intelligence
LicenseAGPLv3[3]
Websitegrafana.com
Repositorygithub.com/grafana/grafana

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, Graphite, InfluxDB, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.[4]

Torkel Odegaard released Grafana in January 2014 as an outgrowth of work at Orbitz. The user interface was originally based on version 3 of Kibana.[5] 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.[6]

Since 2021, Grafana has been licensed under the AGPLv3 (previously Apache 2.0).[3] A commercial Grafana Enterprise edition adds features including LDAP team synchronization, data source permissions, and reporting.[7]

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.[8]

Grafana Labs was founded in 2014 as Raintank and later adopted the Grafana name.[9] The company raised $24 million in Series A funding in 2019,[10] $50 million in Series B in 2020,[11] $220 million in Series C in 2021 (at a $3 billion valuation),[12] and $270 million in 2024 at a $6 billion valuation.[6]

Grafana Labs acquired several companies to expand its observability stack: Kausal (2018),[13] k6 (2021, load testing),[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.[2] 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).[7]

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.[4]

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.[7]

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 7,000 paying customers, including Nvidia, Anthropic, and Uber.[24]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Release 12.4.0". February 25, 2026. Retrieved March 2, 2026.
  2. ^ a b Synopsys. "The grafana Open Source Project on Open Hub: Languages Page". Open Hub. Retrieved March 19, 2021.
  3. ^ a b Dutt, Raj (April 20, 2021). "Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3". Grafana Labs. Retrieved April 21, 2021.
  4. ^ a b Anadiotis, George. "DevOps and observability in the 2020s". ZDNet. Retrieved February 4, 2020.
  5. ^ Odegaard, Torkel (September 3, 2019). "The (Mostly) Complete History of Grafana UX". Grafana Labs. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
  6. ^ a b Lardinois, Frederic (August 21, 2024). "Grafana Labs raises $270M". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 25, 2026.
  7. ^ a b c "Grafana Enterprise Stack". Grafana Labs. Retrieved March 19, 2021.
  8. ^ "MySQL data source". Grafana Labs. Retrieved April 23, 2024.
  9. ^ "'The Story of Grafana' documentary: The business of open source". Grafana Labs. Retrieved February 25, 2026.
  10. ^ Anadiotis, George. "Grafana Labs scores $24M Series A funding". ZDNet. Retrieved February 4, 2020.
  11. ^ Grafana (August 17, 2020). "Grafana Labs Raises $50 Million". GlobeNewswire (Press release). Retrieved July 23, 2021.
  12. ^ "Grafana Labs Raises $220 Million Round at $3 Billion Valuation". Bloomberg. August 24, 2021. Retrieved August 22, 2021.
  13. ^ "Kausal to join Grafana Labs". Kausal.co. March 10, 2018. Retrieved May 27, 2024.
  14. ^ "Grafana Labs acquires load-testing startup K6". VentureBeat. June 17, 2021. Retrieved July 27, 2021.
  15. ^ Lardinois, Frederic (March 15, 2023). "Grafana acquires Pyroscope". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 25, 2026.
  16. ^ "Grafana Labs acquires AI startup Asserts.ai". SiliconANGLE. November 14, 2023. Retrieved February 25, 2026.
  17. ^ "Grafana Labs acquires TailCtrl". Grafana Labs. Retrieved February 25, 2026.
  18. ^ Nerkar, Prashant (March 28, 2024). "Building an Open Source Observability Platform". DevOps.com. Retrieved February 25, 2026.
  19. ^ Lobo, Savia (November 20, 2019). "Grafana Labs announces general availability of Loki 1.0". Packt Hub. Retrieved April 19, 2023.
  20. ^ Gain, B. Cameron (August 10, 2022). "The Great Grafana Mimir and Cortex Split". The New Stack. Retrieved April 19, 2023.
  21. ^ Deutscher, Maria (June 8, 2021). "Grafana Labs eases IT monitoring with Tempo tracing tool". SiliconANGLE. Retrieved April 19, 2023.
  22. ^ Vizard, Mike (August 31, 2023). "Grafana Labs Delivers Open Source Code Profiling Tool". DevOps.com. Retrieved May 27, 2024.
  23. ^ "grafana.wikimedia.org". Wikitech. Retrieved April 9, 2021.
  24. ^ a b c Nieva, Richard (September 30, 2025). "Grafana Labs Is Cleaning Up On The Vibe Coding Boom". Forbes.
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