What is it
Grafana is an independent platform for visualizing data from multiple sources (Prometheus, InfluxDB, SQL). Kibana is a proprietary interface designed exclusively for working with data stored in Elasticsearch.
| Parameter | Grafana | Kibana |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Focus | Metrics and Alerting | Logs and Search |
| Data Sources | 300+ (Multi-source) | Elasticsearch only |
| Query Language | DB-dependent (PromQL, SQL) | KQL, Lucene, ES DSL |
| Installation | Binary, Docker | Part of ELK stack |
| Licensing | AGPLv3 | Elastic License / SSPL |
Performance
Grafana is written in Go and consumes 100-200 MB of RAM in a basic config. The load is placed on the data source (TSDB); Grafana only renders the result. Kibana runs on Node.js and requires at least 1 GB of RAM. The main latency in Kibana is tied to aggregation execution time in Elasticsearch. When handling terabytes of logs, Kibana requires proper sharding and indexing in ES, otherwise, the UI becomes unresponsive.
Configuration & complexity
Grafana supports Monitoring as Code. Dashboards and sources are defined in YAML files: /etc/grafana/provisioning/datasources/. This allows deployment via Terraform or Ansible. Kibana is configured primarily through the GUI. Automation requires using the Kibana API, which is harder to maintain. Defining Index Patterns in Kibana is mandatory before starting, while Grafana is ready for queries as soon as the DB is connected.
When to choose what
- Grafana: Monitoring server health, Kubernetes, and networking. Scenarios where you need to combine data from MySQL, Prometheus, and CloudWatch on one screen.
- Kibana: Incident investigation (troubleshooting), application trace analysis, log string searching, and security auditing (SIEM).
Cost / licensing
Grafana remains open under the AGPLv3 license. An Enterprise version exists with advanced connectors (Oracle, ServiceNow). Following Elastic's license change in 2021, Kibana is not Open Source per OSI standards. A basic version is available for free, but security features (RBAC) and alerting require a paid subscription or the use of the OpenSearch Dashboards fork.
Ecosystem & integrations
Grafana integrates with any TSDB. Plugins allow visualization of data even from JSON APIs. Kibana is part of the Elastic Stack ecosystem (Beats, Logstash, Elastic Agent). This ensures seamless data flow from server to dashboard but creates vendor lock-in.
Verdict
Grafana is the standard for SRE and DevOps engineers who prioritize metric performance and DB flexibility. Kibana is an essential tool for developers and security analysts working with large volumes of unstructured text and logs.