Which fits your team: Grafana Cloud or SigNoz?
If your renewal is coming up, your data must stay in a specific place, or you are tired of running separate backends for metrics, logs and traces, the choice comes down to whether you want a managed Grafana stack or one self-hosted OpenTelemetry-native tool. Grafana Cloud fits teams that want Grafana, Prometheus-compatible metrics, Loki logs and Tempo traces operated by Grafana Labs, with a free tier to start and less operating work. SigNoz fits teams that want logs, metrics and traces in one self-hosted product, stored in ClickHouse, and that have the skills to run ClickHouse and the SigNoz components.
Grafana Cloud is the stronger choice when your team already builds dashboards and alerts in Grafana, values Grafana's ecosystem of data sources and plugins, and would rather not operate upgrades, storage and scaling. Its free tier and Pro tier make it easy to pilot. SigNoz is the stronger choice when you want a single self-hosted tool with APM, tracing, logs and alerting in one interface, and your platform team can own a ClickHouse cluster. Its Community Edition is free to self-host, but support is community Slack only, so plan for internal ownership of incidents and upgrades. Confirm current SAML and compliance terms with SigNoz before you rely on them.
The decision turns on four points. First, data location: confirm where each option stores telemetry and whether your residency rules allow a hosted region. Second, query language: SigNoz supports its Query Builder, PromQL and ClickHouse SQL, while Grafana centers on PromQL and LogQL, so check what your engineers already write. Third, SSO and SAML needs: SigNoz lists SAML on its Teams and Enterprise plans, and Grafana restricts SAML and SCIM to Grafana Enterprise and Grafana Cloud, so confirm which edition your identity policy requires. Fourth, who operates the system: name the people who will patch, back up and scale the stack before you choose.
Which option fits which scenario
These illustrative scenarios show which option tends to fit a given requirement, and the condition that decides it. Read each row against your own constraints, because the deciding factor is often a license, a feature tier or an operating skill rather than raw capability. Confirm every tier-specific feature with the vendor before you commit.
| Scenario | Better fit | Deciding condition |
|---|---|---|
| Data must stay in our own cloud account | SigNoz self-hosted or SigNoz BYOC | Self-hosted Community Edition keeps data in your account. Grafana Cloud stores telemetry in Grafana's hosted service, so confirm data residency options with Grafana before relying on it. |
| Team already writes PromQL and maintains Grafana dashboards | Grafana stack (self-hosted or Grafana Cloud) | Existing PromQL queries and dashboards move with little rewriting. SigNoz also supports PromQL, but dashboards built around Grafana panels and provisioning will need rework. |
| SAML is required for single sign-on | SigNoz Teams or Enterprise | SigNoz lists SAML on its Teams and Enterprise plans only. Self-hosted Grafana supports SAML only in Grafana Enterprise and Grafana Cloud. |
| SCIM user provisioning is required | Grafana Cloud or Grafana Enterprise | The Grafana authentication docs limit SCIM provisioning to Grafana Enterprise and Grafana Cloud. Confirm SigNoz SCIM support with SigNoz before assuming parity. |
| No ClickHouse experience on the team | Grafana Cloud or a managed SigNoz tier | SigNoz stores telemetry in ClickHouse, so self-hosting it means operating that database. Grafana Cloud removes the database work, but you still need skills for Loki, Mimir or Prometheus if you run them yourself. |
| Team wants no servers to run | Grafana Cloud | Grafana Cloud is a hosted service, so Grafana Labs operates the backends. SigNoz Cloud also hosts the platform, so compare plan limits, retention and usage costs for each. |
| Need the free tier with full feature access and no per-user fees | SigNoz Community Edition (self-hosted) | The SigNoz pricing page lists APM, tracing, logs, infrastructure monitoring and alerting in the free edition, but not SAML, SOC 2, HIPAA, anomaly detection or prebuilt integrations. Support is community Slack only. |
| Need a single interface across logs, metrics and traces with one backend | SigNoz | SigNoz keeps all three signal types in ClickHouse behind one interface. Grafana Cloud combines separate backends, so teams may need to learn several query paths. |
How the architectures differ and why it matters
Grafana Cloud is built from the Grafana front end plus separate backends that descend from the Prometheus, Loki and Tempo projects. Metrics, logs and traces are stored in different systems, each with its own query language and its own retention and scaling behavior. Grafana provides the dashboards, alerting and data source connections that tie them together, so a single screen can show all three signal types even though they live apart.
- Separate backends: Metrics follow the Prometheus lineage with PromQL, logs use Loki's LogQL, and traces are handled by the Tempo lineage. Each has its own ingestion path and limits.
- Shared front end: Grafana sits in front of all of them, so teams that already know Grafana keep their dashboards and data source model.
- Operating split: Under Grafana Cloud, Grafana Labs runs the backends. Under a self-hosted version, your team runs Grafana plus each backend, and each one needs its own storage, sizing and upgrade plan.
- Licensing: Grafana, Loki and Tempo are AGPL-3.0 open source, so self-hosting the same projects carries the AGPL obligations that your legal team should review.
- Upgrade rhythm: Grafana publishes frequent minor and patch releases, so the front end and each backend need a planned, tested cadence.
Before committing, confirm which backend features your team uses today, such as specific alerting, team sync or tracing options, and check which of them are available in the edition you plan to run.
SigNoz uses one stack for logs, metrics and traces. Its OpenTelemetry Collector accepts telemetry from many sources and writes it to ClickHouse, a column-oriented database. An API server serves the React frontend and the query APIs, and Alertmanager handles alert deduplication, grouping and notification. The result is one data store and one interface, with the signal types queried from the same database.
- Collector ingestion: The SigNoz OpenTelemetry Collector receives OTLP data from applications and agents, then writes it to ClickHouse.
- Single data store: Logs, metrics and traces share ClickHouse, so correlating a trace with a log line does not require a second system.
- API server and frontend: The API server answers the frontend and query requests, which is the component to monitor and scale alongside the database.
- Alerting path: Alertmanager is part of the alerting chain, so teams familiar with Prometheus alert routing will recognize its role.
- Operating load: Your team owns ClickHouse capacity, retention settings, backups and upgrades. The database becomes the central sizing decision.
Before committing, ask SigNoz and your own platform team how ClickHouse will be sized, backed up and restored for your expected volumes, and which parts of the stack your Kubernetes or Docker setup will manage.
The two designs fail and scale differently. A split design spreads risk across several components, so a problem in one backend can be isolated, but every component adds configuration, version compatibility and access control work. A single-store design reduces the number of moving parts and simplifies correlation, but it concentrates load and recovery planning in one database and one set of query paths.
- Failure isolation: A split stack can keep metrics available while logs are degraded. A single store can make the shared database the main point of failure.
- Correlation: A single store makes cross-signal queries more direct. A split stack relies on consistent labels and trace identifiers across backends.
- Query skills: Split designs ask engineers to know PromQL and LogQL. SigNoz offers its Query Builder, PromQL and ClickHouse SQL, so the skill set depends on how your team chooses to query.
- Staffing: Both require someone who understands storage, scaling and upgrades. Confirm whether your team has ClickHouse, Prometheus or Loki experience before deciding.
- Migration exposure: Changing either design later means re-pointing collectors and rebuilding dashboards and alerts.
Check your expected data volumes, retention requirements and incident response process against both designs before you decide.
The right design depends on where the stack runs and who operates it. A single node, a high availability cluster and an air-gapped network each put different demands on the components. Both options are self-hostable, but the setup steps and failure points differ.
- Single node: SigNoz documents Docker Standalone for self-hosting, which suits a small evaluation. Grafana documents that SQLite is suitable only for small setups, and production needs MySQL or PostgreSQL for its configuration database.
- High availability: Grafana high availability uses two or more active-active servers behind a load balancer sharing a MySQL or PostgreSQL database. The documentation notes that alerting needs extra configuration to avoid duplicate notifications and that Grafana Live has limitations in this mode.
- Kubernetes: SigNoz documents Helm installation with guides for several managed Kubernetes services and GitOps tools. Grafana provides Helm charts, but each backend is a separate chart to manage.
- Air-gapped networks: Confirm with each vendor which update, license and plugin checks need outbound access, and plan offline package delivery.
- Identity: Grafana's SAML and SCIM options are listed for Enterprise and Cloud, while SigNoz lists SAML on its Teams and Enterprise plans. Confirm which identity features your edition includes.
Send your target environment to both vendors and ask for their recommended reference layout in writing.
Where your telemetry lives and who controls access
Telemetry carries hostnames, user identifiers, request paths and sometimes sensitive payloads, so where it is stored and who can reach it matter as much as query features. The four areas below cover where the data sits, how people sign in, how the stack is hardened and kept current, and what evidence a compliance assessment will ask for.
Data location and residency
Grafana Cloud is a hosted service, so your metrics, logs and traces sit in Grafana Labs' environment and you need to confirm the hosting regions available to your account. SigNoz can run in your own cloud account or data center, which keeps storage under your control. SigNoz Cloud offers US, EU and India data centers. Check where ClickHouse volumes, backups and object storage will reside, and whether telemetry leaving your network includes personal data that your residency rules restrict.
Single sign-on and SAML
SigNoz lists SSO on every plan, including the free Community Edition, while SAML is limited to its Teams and Enterprise plans. On the Grafana side, LDAP, generic OAuth, Entra ID, Okta, GitHub and Google OAuth work in every edition, but SAML, team sync and SCIM provisioning are available only in Grafana Enterprise and Grafana Cloud. If your identity provider policy requires SAML or automated deprovisioning, confirm which edition or plan includes it before you choose the stack.
Hardening and self-hosted upgrades
Self-hosting moves hardening onto your team. Grafana's security hardening guidance covers secure and SameSite cookies, a Content Security Policy, Trusted Types, hiding the version from unauthenticated users, authentication on the metrics endpoint and domain verification against DNS rebinding. Grafana publishes minor releases roughly every other month and patch releases at least monthly, with each minor supported for 9 months. Plan a recurring patch window for Grafana, ClickHouse and the SigNoz components, and test it.
Compliance evidence and控制 gaps
Assessments ask for evidence, not just features. SigNoz's free Community Edition does not include SOC 2 or HIPAA compliance, so a regulated team using it must produce its own control evidence or buy a higher plan. Grafana Cloud's compliance posture is a question for the vendor, so request its current reports and data processing terms directly. DeployOpen prepares systems, controls and evidence for your assessment, but independent auditors issue the audit reports and attestations.
What you pay for in each model
The first cost question is who gets paid for what. With Grafana Cloud, the Pro tier carries a 19 US dollar monthly platform fee plus usage, according to the Grafana pricing page, and the Enterprise tier has a minimum commitment of 25,000 US dollars per year. Usage is the variable part, so ask Grafana Labs for a quote that lists the active series, log volume and trace volume you expect, the retention you need and the number of users who need paid seats. Check whether the free tier covers your pilot before you commit to anything. With SigNoz, the Community Edition costs nothing to license, but you pay for the servers, storage and staff time that run it. SigNoz Cloud's Teams plan starts at $49 a month including $49 of usage, and SigNoz Enterprise starts at $4,000 a month, according to the SigNoz pricing page. Confirm with SigNoz which of its usage charges apply to your volumes, since the per-GB and per-sample rates on that page are the drivers.
Some costs are one-time. Instrumenting services with OpenTelemetry, rebuilding dashboards and alert rules, and running parallel pipelines during cutover are paid once, mostly in engineering hours, whichever backend you choose. Budget for them explicitly, because they are often larger than the first year of licensing. Recurring costs differ more. Grafana Cloud bills continuously on usage and platform fees. A self-hosted SigNoz install moves that spending onto your infrastructure: compute for the OpenTelemetry Collector, API server and Alertmanager, ClickHouse storage that grows with retention, and backup storage. Those costs rise with ingest volume and retention period, and they fall when you tune sampling, drop noisy logs or shorten retention for low-value data.
The largest self-hosting cost is usually people. Your team owns ClickHouse operations, including sizing, replication and capacity planning, plus SigNoz upgrades, tested backups and restore drills, and an on-call rota for the observability stack itself. The Community Edition's support is community Slack only, so someone internal must own incidents. If that staffing does not exist, the SigNoz Enterprise offering with enterprise support is one option to price against, and running SigNoz Cloud or a managed deployment is another. Ask any vendor or partner for a written list of which tasks it performs, which it leaves to you, and what happens to your data on exit.
Cost components on each side
Grafana Cloud and self-hosted SigNoz spread cost across different line items. One side bills usage and platform fees, the other moves the bill onto servers, storage and staff time. The cards below list each component, who is paid for it, and what drives it up or down.
Platform fee and tiers
Grafana Cloud publishes a Pro tier with a platform fee plus usage, and an Enterprise tier with a minimum commitment. SigNoz Cloud's Teams plan starts at a monthly fee that includes a usage allowance, and SigNoz Enterprise starts at a higher monthly figure. Self-hosted SigNoz Community Edition has no license fee, so the platform line becomes infrastructure and staff time. Ask each vendor which tier your feature needs, because SAML and compliance features sit on higher tiers on both sides.
Ingest and retention charges
On SigNoz Cloud, logs and traces are billed at $0.30 per GB ingested with 15-day retention, and metrics at $0.10 per million samples with 1-month retention. Grafana Cloud bills usage per active series, GB processed, written and retained. In self-hosted SigNoz, the same volume becomes disk and ClickHouse capacity. Reducing sampling, dropping noisy logs and shortening retention lower the bill on either side, so compare retention periods before comparing unit prices.
User and seat charges
Grafana Cloud pricing includes per-user charges, so headcount of dashboard users and on-call responders changes the bill. Self-hosted SigNoz does not publish per-seat fees in the supplied material, and its SSO is available on every plan including Community Edition, while SAML requires Teams or Enterprise. Confirm with each vendor how viewers, editors and admins are counted, and whether SAML and team sync are included in your tier before modeling headcount growth.
Infrastructure and storage
Self-hosting SigNoz means you pay for compute, block or object storage and networking for the SigNoz OpenTelemetry Collector, ClickHouse, the API server and Alertmanager. Costs rise with ingest volume, query load and retention, and fall when you size ClickHouse for your actual data. Grafana Cloud moves this layer into the vendor's bill. Ask for a sizing estimate based on your ingest rate, retention period and query concurrency, and check whether high availability needs extra nodes.
Staff time for upgrades and backups
Self-hosting shifts recurring operations to your team: patching SigNoz and ClickHouse, backing up data, restoring tests and handling on-call for the stack itself. SigNoz's own pricing describes enterprise self-hosting as the customer's team running infrastructure, storage, scaling, upgrades and backups. Grafana's upgrade guidance also schedules minor and patch releases on a fixed cadence, so plan recurring engineer hours. Estimate this in hours per month, and ask any commercial partner to state its retainer scope in writing.
Support tier and migration work
SigNoz Community Edition support is community Slack only, while paid tiers and Enterprise add vendor support. Grafana Cloud support depends on the tier you buy. Migration is a one-time cost on both sides: re-instrumenting services with OpenTelemetry, rebuilding dashboards and alert rules, and running both backends in parallel during cutover. Ask for a written scope that lists which dashboards, alerts and data sources are in and out, and which support hours apply after go-live.
What moving from Grafana Cloud to SigNoz involves
The sequence turns a Grafana Cloud estate into a SigNoz deployment where logs, metrics and traces are queried from one interface, with each step producing a check you can verify before the next one starts. It is a plan to confirm with your own team and with SigNoz, because no published Grafana Cloud to SigNoz migration path was supplied.
Inventory dashboards, alerts and data sources
Your team lists every Grafana Cloud dashboard, folder, alert rule, contact point, notification policy, data source and telemetry pipeline, including Grafana Alloy or Prometheus remote write configurations, and records which services emit each signal. Dashboards and alert rules can be exported through the Grafana HTTP API, so the inventory can be scripted rather than typed by hand. The step is done when every dashboard and alert has an owner and a status of keep, rebuild or retire.
Confirm the Grafana Cloud exit path with SigNoz
Ask SigNoz in writing whether it offers a supported migration path from Grafana Cloud, since its published migration guides cover Datadog and New Relic. Ask which ingestion endpoints and formats it accepts for your Prometheus metrics, Loki logs and Tempo or other traces, and whether any data can be bulk-imported. The step is done when you have a written answer on each point, and anything unsupported is moved into the scope of the rebuild.
Dual-send OpenTelemetry data during a parallel run
Where your applications already emit OpenTelemetry, add a second exporter or a Collector pipeline so the same traces, metrics and logs reach both Grafana Cloud and your self-hosted SigNoz instance. Where services still use Prometheus scraping or Grafana-specific agents, plan the equivalent OpenTelemetry Collector configuration first. The step is done when the same service signals appear in SigNoz with matching volumes and attributes, and the difference between the two backends is explained.
Rebuild dashboards in SigNoz
Recreate each kept dashboard with the SigNoz Query Builder, PromQL or ClickHouse SQL, choosing the query method that matches the original panel logic. Panels that depend on Grafana-only plugins or on Loki LogQL or Tempo TraceQL syntax need a re-expression, and the team should test each panel against known incidents or traffic. The step is done when each rebuilt dashboard shows values that the owning team has reviewed against Grafana Cloud for the same time window.
Translate alert rules and notification routes
Rewrite each alert rule in SigNoz, then map Grafana contact points and notification policies to SigNoz notification channels and routing, noting that SigNoz uses Alertmanager for deduplication, grouping and notification. Confirm how escalation, silences, maintenance windows and paging integrations behave in your environment, because these often differ from Grafana's behavior. The step is done when each alert has been triggered in a test, the expected recipient received it, and the on-call owner has signed off.
Move users and single sign-on
Confirm which identity model your team uses today, since SigNoz lists SSO on every plan including Community Edition while SAML is available only on its Teams and Enterprise plans. Grafana Cloud SAML, team sync and SCIM provisioning need an equivalent in SigNoz before access can be removed from Grafana. Recreate roles and team access, then ask SigNoz to confirm which provisioning features apply to your plan. The step is done when each user group can log in to SigNoz with the expected permissions and no user depends on a Grafana Cloud login.
Cut over and decommission Grafana Cloud
Switch alerting and dashboard links to SigNoz, stop the Grafana Cloud exporters, and keep Grafana Cloud read-only for a period your compliance owner approves so historical data remains available. Export any data you must retain before cancelling, and review the retention terms in your Grafana Cloud contract. The step is done when the cutover checklist is signed off, the data retention record is filed, and the Grafana Cloud subscription has been closed in writing.
Questions buyers ask before choosing
How much effort does self-hosting SigNoz take, and what drives it?
Self-hosting SigNoz is a recurring operations job, not a one-time install. SigNoz documents installation with Docker Standalone, Docker Swarm and Kubernetes with Helm, so the first deployment is the smallest part of the work. The effort grows with the telemetry volume you send, the number of services instrumented, the retention you need, and how many environments you run. Your team also owns upgrades, backups, scaling and the on-call response for the platform itself. Before comparing, ask SigNoz and your own platform team which deployment path matches your Kubernetes or Docker estate and what sizing they expect for your volumes.
Can a small team run ClickHouse for observability data?
A small team can run it, but it needs someone who understands storage, replication and query performance. In SigNoz, the OpenTelemetry Collector writes logs, metrics and traces to ClickHouse, a column-oriented database, so ClickHouse health directly affects ingestion and query speed. Capacity planning, disk growth, retention settings and backups are the tasks that matter most. If nobody on the team has operated a columnar database before, budget time for training or outside help. Ask SigNoz which ClickHouse topology they recommend for your expected volume, and test restores before you rely on the platform.
How long does a migration from Grafana Cloud to SigNoz take?
The duration depends on scope, not on the tool alone. The main drivers are how many dashboards, alert rules and data sources you must rebuild, how many services already emit OpenTelemetry, and whether logs and traces come through the same pipeline. Teams that instrument with OpenTelemetry can send the same telemetry to both backends during a parallel run, which lets them compare results before cutting over. Dashboards and alerts that use PromQL translate more directly than those built on Grafana-specific features. We do not publish a duration, and the reader should ask for a timeline based on an inventory of their own dashboards, alerts and sources.
Can SigNoz and Grafana run side by side during an evaluation?
Yes, in most architectures they can, because both can receive telemetry from the same OpenTelemetry Collector. The Collector can fan out one data stream to more than one exporter, so a test environment can send traces, metrics and logs to a SigNoz instance and a Grafana stack at the same time. This makes side-by-side comparison of query speed, dashboards and alert behavior practical. Confirm the exporter configuration, the sampling rules and the data retention in each backend, because differences there will skew any comparison. Keep the parallel run in a non-production or limited scope to control the added load on your collectors and networks.
What skills and staff time does a SigNoz deployment need internally?
You need Kubernetes or Docker operators, someone who owns the ClickHouse layer, and engineers who can instrument services with OpenTelemetry and write queries. The platform team handles hosting, networking, storage, upgrades and backups. Application teams handle instrumentation, service naming and the dashboards they rely on. Someone must also own alert routing and on-call response, since SigNoz includes alerting and Alertmanager handles deduplication and notification. Ask your candidates how they would cover each role during a holiday or incident, because a single-person dependency is the most common operational risk in a self-hosted stack.
Does SigNoz Community Edition meet SOC 2 or HIPAA requirements?
No. The SigNoz pricing page states that the free, self-hosted Community Edition does not include SAML, SOC 2 or HIPAA compliance. It also lists community Slack as the only support in that edition. Compliance readiness is a separate question from the software license: your organization still has to design controls, collect evidence and have an independent auditor assess them. If you need SAML or a vendor support agreement, the pricing page places those on the Teams and Enterprise plans. Confirm the current compliance position with SigNoz directly before you make a decision that depends on it.
Can DeployOpen run SigNoz for us as a retainer?
DeployOpen can plan, implement, harden, back up, upgrade, document and support self-hosted open-source platforms inside your own cloud accounts, data centers or air-gapped networks, and ongoing support, upgrades and continuous testing are available as retainers. Most engagements are fixed-scope, with scope, deliverables and timelines agreed in writing before work starts. DeployOpen does not publish a price list, so a quote follows from the written scope. DeployOpen prepares systems and evidence for compliance assessments but does not issue audit reports or certifications. Ask for a written scope covering the platform, the ClickHouse layer, upgrades and the support hours you need.
How DeployOpen helps you choose and run either option
DeployOpen starts by working out whether your team needs one self-hosted tool that holds logs, metrics and traces, or a Grafana stack with separate backends. We then plan, implement and document the option you choose inside your own cloud accounts, data centers or air-gapped networks.
How we scope
- We review your current telemetry sources, OpenTelemetry coverage, retention needs and data residency requirements before recommending either option.
- The written scope lists the components to deploy, the dashboards and alerts to rebuild, and the integrations to connect.
- Engagements are fixed-scope, with deliverables and timelines agreed in writing before any work starts.
How we build
- We deploy SigNoz with its OpenTelemetry Collector and ClickHouse, or the Grafana, Prometheus, Loki and Mimir components, in your environment.
- We configure OpenTelemetry pipelines so the same instrumentation can feed a commercial backend and the chosen self-hosted tool during a parallel run.
- We test authentication, alert routing, high availability settings and dashboard parity against the scope before cutover.
How we hand over
- We document architecture, configuration, backup and upgrade procedures so your engineers can operate the stack without us.
- Dashboards, data sources and alert rules are captured as code where the chosen tool supports it, so changes can be reviewed and reproduced.
- We walk your operations and security teams through runbooks and provide the evidence needed for your own compliance assessors.
How we support
- Ongoing support, upgrades and continuous testing are available as a retainer after handover.
- Retainer scope, response expectations and upgrade cycles are set out in writing so you know what you are buying.
- Quotes follow from the written scope, so ask for line items covering deployment, integration, documentation and support separately.
