Checkmk vs Grafana Cloud Application Observability
Checkmk
checkmk.comGrafana Cloud Application Observability
grafana.comSide by side
| Figure | Checkmk | Grafana Cloud Application Observability |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $275/mo | $0.03/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 5 | 5 |
| Spec score · Kubernetes Monitoring | 9.4 (#1) | 9.2 (#3) |
| Spec score · Metrics Monitoring Tools | 9.4 (#1) | 9.2 (#3) |
| Spec score · Cloud Monitoring | 9.4 (#1) | 9.2 (#3) |
| Spec score · Monitoring Observability | 9.4 (#1) | 9.2 (#2) |
| Founded | 2007 | 2014 |
| Integrations | Checkmk advertises more than 2,000 built-in integrations covering hardware, networks, applications, operating systems and cloud or container platforms. | Grafana Cloud connection tiles support Java, .NET, Beyla, Grafana Alloy, OTLP, and the upstream OpenTelemetry Collector. |
| Rating on Apple App Store | No rating overview is displayed because the app has not received enough ratings or reviews. | 4.7 out of 5 from 60 ratings |
| Rating on G2 | 4.7 out of 5 from 306 reviews. | 4.5 out of 5 from 209 reviews |
| Rating on Gartner Peer Insights | 4.5 out of 5 from 138 reviews. | 4.6 out of 5 from 437 ratings |
| Rating on TrustRadius | 9.1 out of 10 from 18 reviews and ratings. | 8.6 out of 10 from 173 reviews |
| What it does | Checkmk provides unified infrastructure monitoring and observability across servers, networks, applications, databases, cloud, containers and user experience. | Grafana Cloud Application Observability provides managed application performance monitoring by combining OpenTelemetry and Prometheus telemetry with Grafana Cloud insights. |
Plans
Checkmk
- CommunityFree
- Synthetic MonitoringFree
- Pro$275 a month
- Cloud$290 a month
- Ultimate$400 a month
Grafana Cloud Application Observability
- FreeFree
- Pro$0.03 a month
- FreeFree
- Pro$0.03 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Checkmk
Checkmk monitors cloud, hybrid, and data center infrastructure, including containers and networks. For web, mail, and database servers, it combines more than 2,000 smart checks with automatic discovery and network mapping. Monitoring can use native agents for Windows, Linux, and other systems, agentless SNMP and TCP/UDP checks, or API-based checks over HTTP/XML, SSH, or TELNET. Cloud coverage includes AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, with automatic component detection and Quick Setup. One instance can monitor thousands of servers, while distributed monitoring supports horizontal scaling. Community includes more than 2,000 integrations and is intended for smaller environments, scaling to approximately 100 hosts. The software can run on customer hardware or virtualized infrastructure, with Linux distribution packages, Docker, and a Virtual Appliance. The Community plan is free forever and includes community support. The pricing note lists paid plans from €190/mo (annual) and a 30-day trial. Other listed plan prices use USD: Pro is $275 a month, Cloud is $290 a month, and Ultimate is $400 a month. Platforms include API, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows.
Grafana Cloud Application Observability
Grafana Cloud Application Observability monitors applications and brings OpenTelemetry and Prometheus data together to help software engineers investigate anomalies and their causes. Its knowledge graph discovers services and relationships from telemetry, while the service catalog displays latency, error ratio, and request rate for each service. The RCA workbench and Entity Graph help investigate correlated problems across a stack. Metrics, logs, traces, and profiles share a unified view, with drill-down from a service into its signals. Grafana identifies Alloy as a collector with native pipelines for OpenTelemetry and Prometheus. The free plan includes up to 2,232 host hours per month and community support. Pro is listed at $0.03 a month, with a $19 monthly platform fee and $0.025 per host hour; host hours and application telemetry are billed at standard Grafana Cloud rates. Serverless usage is billed on telemetry ingested instead of host hours. The cloud service runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, and the web.