Why engineering teams choose Last9 vs Grafana
Both have an AI assistant, an SRE agent, and an MCP server. Last9 uses your model provider, charges nothing per investigation, runs in your own cloud account, and bills one licence. Grafana is the dashboard ops teams know, with the widest set of data sources. Last9 starts from your services, and your Grafana dashboards come with you.
1-click import for your Grafana dashboards and alerts. A Last9 engineer runs the move with your team.
Named a Gartner® Cool Vendor in AI for SRE and Observability, cited for its unified telemetry platform.
The Last9 agent runs on your model provider, with no per-investigation charge, in your own cloud account.
No meter per active series or per GB. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill.
At a glance
Last9 vs Grafana at a glance
The questions engineering teams ask when they compare the two.
Does it have an MCP server for coding agents?
Yes, a hosted MCP server for any MCP client. An agent can also add drop rules and edit dashboards through it
Yes, an open-source server and a hosted Grafana Cloud server. An agent can edit dashboards, alert rules, and incidents through them
What does the AI cost?
No per-query or per-investigation charge
Grafana Cloud bills each active AI user, plus tokens. Anyone who connects through the hosted MCP server counts as an AI user
Can the AI use our model provider, in our own cloud?
Yes. The Last9 agent runs on your model provider or inference endpoint, and Last9 runs in your own cloud account
No. Grafana Assistant runs on Claude through Grafana's own providers, with no documented option to bring your own model
How is it priced?
One licence. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill, at your negotiated rates
Grafana Cloud meters each signal on its own: active series, GB of logs and traces, users, host hours, and AI users. The self-managed stack has no licence fee, and your team runs it
How much metric cardinality can I keep?
20M series per metric per day by default, with no sampling and no charge per label or metric name
No fixed cap, but Grafana Cloud bills each active series, so every new label value adds to the bill
Can I filter telemetry before I pay to store it?
Yes. The Control Plane drops, aggregates, and routes at ingest
Yes. Adaptive Telemetry drops or aggregates unused metrics, logs, traces, and profiles, in every Grafana Cloud tier
Can it run in our own cloud account?
Yes. Last9 runs in your own cloud account, on AWS or GCP in any region, and manages it for you
Yes. BYOC runs Grafana Cloud in your AWS or GCP account, on request. A self-managed stack runs anywhere, without the Cloud-only AI and Adaptive Telemetry
What about our APM agents and integrations?
APM from OpenTelemetry is part of the platform, with 100+ integrations, plus anything with OpenTelemetry or Prometheus
Application Observability is a separate Grafana Cloud product, billed by host hours, with 100+ integrations
What about data in our other tools?
Last9 stores the telemetry you send it over OpenTelemetry and Prometheus
Grafana queries data where it lives, from SQL databases to CloudWatch and Elasticsearch, and adds on-call, incidents, and k6 load tests
| Capability | Last9 | Grafana |
|---|---|---|
| Does it have an MCP server for coding agents? | Yes, a hosted MCP server for any MCP client. An agent can also add drop rules and edit dashboards through it | Yes, an open-source server and a hosted Grafana Cloud server. An agent can edit dashboards, alert rules, and incidents through them |
| What does the AI cost? | No per-query or per-investigation charge | Grafana Cloud bills each active AI user, plus tokens. Anyone who connects through the hosted MCP server counts as an AI user |
| Can the AI use our model provider, in our own cloud? | Yes. The Last9 agent runs on your model provider or inference endpoint, and Last9 runs in your own cloud account | No. Grafana Assistant runs on Claude through Grafana's own providers, with no documented option to bring your own model |
| How is it priced? | One licence. The infrastructure runs on your own cloud bill, at your negotiated rates | Grafana Cloud meters each signal on its own: active series, GB of logs and traces, users, host hours, and AI users. The self-managed stack has no licence fee, and your team runs it |
| How much metric cardinality can I keep? | 20M series per metric per day by default, with no sampling and no charge per label or metric name | No fixed cap, but Grafana Cloud bills each active series, so every new label value adds to the bill |
| Can I filter telemetry before I pay to store it? | Yes. The Control Plane drops, aggregates, and routes at ingest | Yes. Adaptive Telemetry drops or aggregates unused metrics, logs, traces, and profiles, in every Grafana Cloud tier |
| Can it run in our own cloud account? | Yes. Last9 runs in your own cloud account, on AWS or GCP in any region, and manages it for you | Yes. BYOC runs Grafana Cloud in your AWS or GCP account, on request. A self-managed stack runs anywhere, without the Cloud-only AI and Adaptive Telemetry |
| What about our APM agents and integrations? | APM from OpenTelemetry is part of the platform, with 100+ integrations, plus anything with OpenTelemetry or Prometheus | Application Observability is a separate Grafana Cloud product, billed by host hours, with 100+ integrations |
| What about data in our other tools? | Last9 stores the telemetry you send it over OpenTelemetry and Prometheus | Grafana queries data where it lives, from SQL databases to CloudWatch and Elasticsearch, and adds on-call, incidents, and k6 load tests |
Differences
Where Last9 and Grafana differ
Three places the two platforms take a different approach, with the tradeoffs stated.
AI on your model, in your cloud
-
One assistant in the app, in Slack, and in your IDE through MCP. It investigates, builds a diagnosis dashboard, and hands you the link.
-
The production agent, Last9, responds to pages with context from Slack, Linear, and PagerDuty. It runs on your model provider or inference endpoint and picks the model for each step. Customer data is never used for training.
-
An agent can do more than read. Through MCP it can add a drop rule and stop ingesting the noisy source it found.
-
Click a point on a chart, a table row, an alert, or an exception, and choose Ask Last9 AI. The investigation starts from that value, in its service context.
Grafana
Grafana Assistant, Assistant Investigations, and a hosted MCP server are generally available in Grafana Cloud. They are billed per active AI user plus tokens, and run on Claude through Grafana's providers. Self-managed Grafana reaches the Assistant through a linked Grafana Cloud stack.
One licence instead of a meter per signal
-
Labels like customer_id or tenant stay on the metric, with no charge per label or metric name.
-
Drop, remap, redact, forward, and aggregate metrics, logs, and traces at ingest, from the UI. Every rule is previewed against live data before you save it.
Grafana
Grafana Cloud bills metrics per active series and logs, traces, and profiles per GB, with separate meters for users, host hours, and AI users. Adaptive Telemetry cuts what each meter counts, in every tier.
Matters most for
Teams whose per-customer or per-tenant labels grow faster than their budget.
Your cloud, your dashboards, your services
-
Last9 runs single-tenant in your own cloud account, on AWS or GCP in any region, and manages it for you. Every feature runs there, including the AI.
-
Your Grafana dashboards and alerts import into Last9's embedded Grafana, and convert to native Last9 dashboards when you are ready. Your own Grafana can also query Last9 metrics as a Prometheus data source.
-
APM starts from your services: discovery, dependency maps, database and external calls, Apdex, exceptions, and trace correlation, from OpenTelemetry.
Grafana
BYOC runs Grafana Cloud in your AWS or GCP account, operated by Grafana. The self-managed stack is open source, and your team operates Mimir, Loki, and Tempo, without Assistant, Investigations, or Adaptive Telemetry.
Matters most for
Teams that run LGTM themselves and want it managed, and app teams that want service views instead of panels they build.
Which fits you
Which one fits your team?
Choose Last9 if
- You want AI on your own model provider, with no charge per investigation
- You want one licence instead of a meter for each signal
- Your metrics carry per-customer or per-tenant labels, and active-series billing is the complaint
- You run LGTM yourselves and want it managed, inside your own cloud account
- Your app teams want service views, not panels they build themselves
Choose Grafana if
- Your ops team builds and owns its dashboards across many data sources
- You want on-call, incidents, and k6 load tests from the same vendor
- You want to run the open-source stack yourselves, with no licence fee
- Your cardinality is under control, so active-series billing stays predictable
Migration
Moving off Grafana
What the switch involves, and what Last9 does for you.
Forward deployed engineers
A Last9 engineer runs the move with your team.
Talk to an engineer1-click dashboard and alert import
Grafana dashboards and alerts import in one click into Last9's embedded Grafana, so your team keeps its workflow. Convert dashboards to native Last9 dashboards when you are ready.
Keep your instrumentation
Anything sending OpenTelemetry or Prometheus remote write needs only a new endpoint. Grafana Alloy can send the same logs to Last9 over OTLP while Loki keeps running.
See the integrationsRun both
Keep Grafana for the data in your other tools, and add Last9 metrics to it as a Prometheus data source. Compare the two on your own incidents as you go.
Objections
The objections we hear most
Each one is a fair reason to hesitate.
Grafana already has Grafana Assistant, Investigations, and an MCP server. Why switch for AI?
AI alone is not the difference. What differs is the model, the cost, and where it runs: the Last9 agent runs on your model provider, has no per-investigation charge, and runs inside your own cloud account.
We can get BYOC from Grafana, or self-host the LGTM stack.
Both are real options. BYOC runs Grafana Cloud in your account, operated by Grafana. Self-hosting has no licence fee, and your team then operates Mimir, Loki, and Tempo, without the Cloud-only AI and Adaptive Telemetry. Last9 runs in your own cloud account, manages it for you, and bills one licence.
Our dashboards, alerts, and queries all live in Grafana.
Dashboards and alerts import into Last9's embedded Grafana, so the workflow stays the same, and PromQL and LogQL run natively. Convert dashboards to native Last9 dashboards when you are ready. A Last9 engineer scopes the move with you before you sign.
Adaptive Telemetry already cuts our Grafana Cloud bill.
It does, and it runs in every Grafana Cloud tier. It reduces what each meter counts, but the meters stay: active series, GB, users, and AI users are still billed. Last9 is one licence, with the infrastructure on your own cloud bill.
Is Last9 proven at our scale?
Last9 regularly handles 500M+ events a minute and 60M+ concurrent users, and has monitored 12 of the world's 20 largest streaming events. It is SOC 2 Type II certified and PCI ready, with SSO and access controls. Teams across fintech, healthcare, gaming, media, and commerce run it in production, including Replit, Pine Labs, Tata 1mg, and Housing.com.
67%
Average reduction in observability costs
2.5x
More telemetry retained without sampling
1-click
Grafana dashboard and alert import
24x7
Support from forward deployed engineers
Customers
What do Last9 customers say?
With Last9, we just eliminated the toil. No more worrying about failing dashboards or alerts — we can finally use our metrics. It just works.
Last9 allowed us to offload the operational overhead of scaling so we could focus on business alerting rather than infrastructure management.
Frequently asked questions
Ask AI about this comparison
Do not take our word for it. Send the question to an assistant and check what it finds.
Can't find the answer to your question?
Talk to our support team for help.
Start observing for free. No lock-in.
OpenTelemetry · Prometheus
Just update your config. Start seeing data on Last9 in seconds.
Datadog · New Relic · Others
We've got you covered. Bring over your dashboards & alerts in one click.
Built on Open Standards
100+ integrations. OTel native, works with your existing stack.
