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Plexus vs Grafana

Grafana is a dashboard builder. You bring the storage, build the dashboards, write the alert rules, and maintain all of it. Plexus is storage and dashboards for hardware teams: connect a device or a database you already run, and the starter dashboard builds itself from the first data that lands.

The full comparison is at plexus.company/compare/plexus-vs-grafana.

Where Grafana wins

  • Maturity and reach. Grafana is open source (AGPLv3), widely deployed, and far older than Plexus.
  • Plugins. Its plugin and data-source catalog is vast. Plexus connects to far fewer sources today.
  • Bespoke dashboards. For building any dashboard across many sources, nothing is more flexible. Plexus dashboards are editable, but Plexus is not a general-purpose dashboard builder.
  • Software and infrastructure monitoring. That is what most Grafana stacks are built for. Plexus is built for machines.
  • Running it yourself. Grafana OSS is free to run on your own servers. Plexus is a hosted service only.
  • Alerting you tune yourself. Grafana alerting can be configured to do a great deal, if you have the team to set it up.

Plexus is closed source. Only the Python SDK is open source.

Where Plexus fits

  • Works on connect. Storage, dashboards and alerting come together, with nothing to assemble.
  • Dashboards from first data. The starter dashboard is generated from the metrics that actually arrive.
  • Built-in monitors. Threshold, event and offline monitors, each with its own Slack and email routing.
  • Alert history. Every alert keeps a timeline, plus your team's verdict on whether it was real.

Monitors and alerts need Pro. Storage and dashboards are on Free.

Using both

Both can read a database you already run. If your metrics are in PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB, MySQL or ClickHouse, Grafana and Plexus can read the same data. Keep Grafana for the dashboards you've built.

To move a Grafana dashboard into Plexus, see Import Grafana dashboards.