See Every Second of Your Infrastructure Without the Configuration Burden

Yes, many organizations use both complementarily. Netdata excels at infrastructure monitoring and real-time troubleshooting, while Grafana handles multi-source BI dashboards and distributed tracing. The Clew case study demonstrates this approach: Netdata for rapid troubleshooting and OS-level insights, Grafana for custom long-term dashboards. Netdata can also export metrics to Prometheus for Grafana visualization if needed.

Netdata uses simple per-node pricing with unlimited metrics, logs, and users included. Grafana Cloud charges per active series plus data points per minute multipliers - a 15-second scrape interval costs 4× more than expected. Netdata’s resource efficiency (36% less CPU, 88% less RAM) further reduces infrastructure costs. See transparent pricing for details.

Netdata provides automatic dashboards for all collected metrics, eliminating the need to rebuild dashboards manually. Each Netdata chart equals 25+ Grafana charts with full analytical capabilities. For the 5% of cases requiring custom dashboards, Netdata supports drag-and-drop creation. Most customers find Netdata’s algorithmic dashboards superior because they adapt automatically as infrastructure changes - no maintenance required. The Webnestify case study saved 10+ hours weekly by eliminating dashboard maintenance.

No. Netdata’s NIDL framework (Nodes, Instances, Dimensions, Labels) provides point-and-click analysis without query languages. Dropdown menus above each chart let you filter, aggregate, and slice data instantly. For advanced analysis, AI Chat via MCP lets you ask questions in plain English. This eliminates the weeks-to-months learning curve required for PromQL/LogQL proficiency, making monitoring accessible to all team members regardless of experience level.

Netdata captures 60× more data points, revealing microbursts, transient spikes, and cascading failures that minute-averages completely hide. Example: A 5-second CPU spike every 20 seconds appears as harmless 25% average load in 60-second monitoring but shows as damaging 100% spikes in Netdata. TMB Barcelona discovered bandwidth problems and TCP retransmission errors invisible to their previous monitoring. This is why Netdata achieves 80% MTTR reduction - you see what happened, not statistical approximations.

Yes, and more efficiently. Netdata’s distributed edge architecture scales linearly to 100,000+ nodes without performance degradation. Each agent operates independently, eliminating the central bottleneck that causes Grafana performance issues at scale. Netdata benchmark at 4.6M metrics/second shows Netdata uses 36% less CPU, 88% less RAM, and 97% less disk I/O than Prometheus+Grafana while providing 16× faster queries. The University of Amsterdam study confirmed Netdata as the most energy-efficient monitoring solution.

Grafana Tempo provides mature distributed tracing today, which Netdata doesn’t yet support (planned Q2 2026 with OpenTelemetry traces). For organizations requiring distributed tracing immediately, we recommend using Netdata for infrastructure monitoring and Grafana Tempo for traces. This complementary approach is common - Netdata excels at per-second infrastructure visibility and troubleshooting, while Tempo handles microservices trace analysis. Many customers find this combination more effective than using Grafana for everything.

Netdata runs 18 unsupervised ML models per metric automatically at the edge, requiring unanimous consensus before flagging anomalies (10⁻³⁶ theoretical false positive rate). This happens on all 3,000-20,000 metrics per node with zero configuration. Grafana’s ML requires Pro/Advanced tier, manual configuration, and only works on selected metrics. Webnestify’s testimonial highlights how Netdata’s anomaly detection averted a crisis on 100+ high-traffic servers - something threshold-based alerts would have missed.

Start with parallel deployment: install Netdata agents on 5-10 servers without disrupting Grafana. Within days, you’ll see comprehensive monitoring with zero configuration versus Grafana’s manual setup. Expand Netdata coverage based on proven value over 30-90 days. Most organizations either fully replace Grafana (hosting providers, infrastructure teams) or maintain Grafana for specific multi-source BI dashboards while using Netdata for infrastructure monitoring. The TMB Barcelona case study consolidated Grafana, Prometheus, and Kibana into Netdata, achieving ‘better and faster observability singlehandedly.’

Yes. Netdata works completely offline with all observability data staying on-premises. For centralized dashboards in air-gapped environments, Netdata Cloud On-Premises provides the full control plane within your datacenter. This architecture satisfies GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS requirements by design - no metric or log data ever leaves your infrastructure. Grafana also supports self-hosted deployment, but Netdata’s zero-configuration approach makes it significantly simpler to deploy and maintain in restricted environments.

Netdata eliminates the entire log pipeline by querying systemd-journal files directly where they live - no ingestion, no indexing, no centralized cluster. This achieves 90% cost reduction versus Elasticsearch/Splunk and 200× more accurate analysis (1M entries analyzed before sampling versus Loki’s 5K). Grafana Loki requires ingestion, suffers from query timeouts on large datasets, and has throughput limitations. Netdata’s zero-pipeline architecture provides instant correlation with metrics since both come from the same source.

Netdata’s philosophy prioritizes instant value over infinite customization. Each Netdata chart provides 25+ Grafana charts worth of analytical capability through point-and-click - no dashboard building required. For the 5% of cases needing custom views, Netdata supports drag-and-drop dashboard creation. The key insight: 95% of Grafana dashboards collect dust while teams struggle with maintenance. Netdata’s algorithmic dashboards adapt automatically as infrastructure changes, eliminating the maintenance burden that consumes 10+ hours weekly in Grafana environments. Focus on solving problems, not building dashboards.

For infrastructure monitoring: yes, completely. Netdata provides metrics (per-second collection), logs (systemd-journal), alerts (400+ templates), ML (automatic anomaly detection), and AI (troubleshooting assistant) in a single platform. TMB Barcelona consolidated exactly this stack into Netdata. However, if you need distributed tracing (Tempo) or multi-source BI dashboards combining infrastructure with business data, maintain Grafana for those specific use cases. The Clew case study demonstrates this complementary approach successfully.

Netdata includes 800+ integrations built-in versus Grafana’s 150+ separate plugins. This eliminates plugin management overhead, compatibility checking, and security update tracking. Everything ships with the core agent and updates automatically. For the rare cases where Netdata doesn’t have a built-in collector, it supports StatsD, OpenMetrics, Prometheus scraping, and OpenTelemetry - covering 99% of custom metric needs. The trade-off: Grafana has more exotic data sources (Jira, Salesforce), but these are rarely needed for infrastructure monitoring.

Grafana has a larger community (25M users) and more community dashboards, but this creates complexity rather than value for infrastructure monitoring. Netdata’s 1.5M daily downloads and 76,000+ GitHub stars represent a substantial community focused on operational simplicity. More importantly: Netdata’s zero-configuration approach means you don’t need community dashboards - everything works automatically. The University of Amsterdam study and Netdata benchmark provide validation that matters more than community size.

Netdata uses simple per-node pricing with volume discounts at higher node counts. All features included - unlimited metrics, logs, users, AI. Grafana Cloud charges per active series plus data points per minute multipliers. The multiplication effect means higher scrape frequencies dramatically increase costs. Additionally, Grafana charges separately for logs, users, and advanced features. See transparent pricing for Netdata’s straightforward model.