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The Showdown

Grafana Cloudvsdark

Why pay monthly fees for Grafana Cloud when you can self-host dark for free? Let's look at the facts.

Grafana Cloud

The Expensive Option

  • Closed Source (Black box)
  • Expensive monthly fees per user
  • Data stored on their servers
WINNER

dark

The Freedom Choice

  • 100% Open Source Code
  • Free forever (Self-hosted)
  • You own your data completely
Get dark Now
Interactive Calculator

Calculate Your "SaaS Tax"

SaaS pricing is designed to scale with your success. See how much wealth transfers from your bank account to Grafana Cloud's shareholders.

10 people
150100200+
$

*Estimated standard pricing for Grafana Cloud. Adjust if needed.

Estimated Annual Waste
$1,440
Monthly Burn Rate$120
5-Year Projection$7,200
Cost with Self-Hosted$0
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Calculations based on 10 users at $12/mo.

Detailed Breakdown

0
Web UI or Terraform
Kubernetes CRDs (YAML)
1
Centralized database
K8s Controller reconciliation
2
Manual or API-driven
GitOps / CI/CD native