Side by side
Grafana Cloud Application Observability vs M3
Both stand on metrics monitoring tools. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Grafana Cloud Application Observability brings several telemetry types and service-level views together for application investigation. Review the included host hours and billing basis, especially for serverless environments, before choosing a plan.
Visit Grafana Cloud Application Observability
Pick M3 for open-source, Prometheus-compatible metrics storage when long retention, scaling, and its supported query and ingestion options fit your needs. Look elsewhere for general-purpose time-series storage or if your workflow depends on large-scale backfilling or stored values beyond the float64 optimization.
Visit M3The facts
| Grafana Cloud Application Observability | M3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | No | Not published |
| Runs on | Android, API, Extension, iPhone, Linux, Mac, Web, Windows | API, Linux, Mac, Self-hosted |
| Lowest paid plan | Pro: $0.03 per host a month | Free or on request |
| Plans published | 3 | 1 |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | grafana.com | m3db.io |
| On metrics monitoring tools | #8 of 37 | #12 of 37 |
Grafana Cloud Application Observability: what it does well
- Automatically discovers services and relationships.
- Service catalog displays latency, errors, and request rate.
- Unifies metrics, logs, traces, and profiles.
- Free plan includes up to 2,232 host hours monthly.
What to know first
- Free plan includes community support.
- Paid usage charges for host hours and telemetry.
- Serverless billing is based on ingested telemetry.
M3: what it does well
- Supports PromQL, Graphite, and M3QL queries.
- Accepts Prometheus remote write, StatsD, Carbon, InfluxDB line protocol, and JSON.
- Supports horizontal scaling and retention policies.
- Offers binaries, Docker, and documented Kubernetes cluster deployment.
- Open-sourced under Apache 2 with contributions welcomed.
What to know first
- M3DB is not intended as a general-purpose time-series database.
- Large-scale backfilling is not currently possible.
- Stored values are optimized for float64.
Alternatives to Grafana Cloud Application Observability Alternatives to M3 The whole list