Grafana Cloud Kubernetes Monitoring provides dashboards and alerts for inspecting Kubernetes fleets and troubleshooting infrastructure. It covers resource use, health, performance, and costs, with tools for resource efficiency, job and energy monitoring, recording rules, and predictions. Grafana Alloy collects Kubernetes metrics, events, and Pod logs, can receive application traces, and sends data to Grafana Cloud. Cost views use OpenCost to estimate infrastructure costs and show allocations across clusters, namespaces, workloads, Pods, and containers. Application telemetry can be sent through OpenTelemetry, Zipkin, or Jaeger receivers, or compatible Prometheus integrations. Its Helm chart supports platforms including EKS, GKE, AKS, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, and Red Hat OpenShift. The service is available only in Grafana Cloud and supports only data sources hosted there. The free plan includes 2,232 host hours and 37,944 container hours per month, community support, and no credit card requirement. Current-model billing uses active host and container hours; telemetry from other products may be billed separately.
Who it is for
It suits teams that need dashboards, alerts, and cost views for Kubernetes fleets. Setup requires a Grafana Cloud account, a cluster, kubectl, Helm, and the Admin role to install alerts.
What is good
- Free plan includes monthly host and container hours.
- Views cost allocations across clusters and workloads.
- Collects Kubernetes metrics, events, and Pod logs.
- Supports several Kubernetes platforms, including EKS and AKS.
What to know first
- Available only in Grafana Cloud.
- Supports only data sources hosted in Grafana Cloud.
- Telemetry from other products is billed separately.
Verdict
Grafana Cloud Kubernetes Monitoring combines fleet visibility, alerts, and cost estimates in a cloud-only service. Check the setup requirements and separate telemetry charges when planning its use.
Grafana Cloud Kubernetes Monitoring plans and pricing
All plansCompared on container monitoring
- Free plan
- Yes
- Supported platforms
- Kubernetes, Amazon EKS, Google GKE, Azure AKS, GKE Autopilot, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, Red Hat OpenShift, and EKS on AWS Fargate
- Container metrics
- Yes
- Resource alerts
- Yes
- Image monitoring
- Yes
- Runtime events
- Yes
- Container log collection
- Yes
