Grafana Cloud Application Observability vs SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
Grafana Cloud Application Observability
grafana.comSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
solarwinds.comSide by side
| Figure | Grafana Cloud Application Observability | SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.03/mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 1 |
| Spec score · Database Monitoring | 9.3 (#1) | 7.4 (#23) |
| Spec score · Database Performance Monitoring Software | 9.2 (#1) | 7.4 (#14) |
| Founded | 2014 | 1999 |
| Integrations | Grafana Cloud connection tiles support Java, .NET, Beyla, Grafana Alloy, OTLP, and the upstream OpenTelemetry Collector. | The datasheet lists RESTful API, SolarWinds Platform, PerfStack, AppStack, and CyberArk Credential Management Vault integration. |
| Purpose | Grafana Cloud Application Observability provides out-of-the-box application monitoring and uses OpenTelemetry and Prometheus data to support root-cause analysis. | Database Performance Analyzer monitors and optimizes multiple database platforms in cloud and on-premises environments. |
Plans
Grafana Cloud Application Observability
- FreeFree
- Pro$0.03 a month
- FreeFree
- Pro$0.03 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
- Database Performance AnalyzerPriced on request
In their own words
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.
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer monitors and optimizes databases deployed in cloud and on-premises environments. It examines database activity, wait times, SQL statements, execution plans, and locks to help teams locate performance issues. Monitoring runs continuously with down-to-the-second views for both current and historical analysis, while machine learning supports database anomaly detection. Supported targets include Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, IBM Db2, SAP ASE, SAP HANA, Amazon Aurora, Google Cloud SQL, and Percona. Databases on Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud are covered, and VMware vSphere performance can be correlated with guest operating-system and infrastructure metrics. DPA is agentless, with stated resource use below 1% of total. It runs through API, Linux, self-hosted, and Windows environments with hybrid deployment. Integrations include RESTful API, SolarWinds Platform, PerfStack, AppStack, and CyberArk Vault. Pricing starts at $142/mo (annual), with a 14-day fully functional trial and no credit card requirement.