Grafana vs. Retool

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Grafana
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Grafana is a data visualization tool developed by Grafana Labs in New York. It is available open source, managed (Grafana Cloud), or via an enterprise edition with enhanced features. Grafana has pluggable data source model and comes bundled with support for popular time series databases like Graphite. It also has built-in support for cloud monitoring vendors like Amazon Cloudwatch, Microsoft Azure and SQL databases like MySQL. Grafana can combine data from many places into a single dashboard.
$8
per month up to 1 active user
Retool
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Retool is a UI software component library presenting a fast way to build custom internal tools, from the company of the same name in San Francisco, California.
$10
per month per user
Pricing
GrafanaRetool
Editions & Modules
Grafana Cloud - Pro
$8
per month up to 1 active user
Grafana Cloud - Free
Free
10k metrics + 50GB logs + 50GB traces up to 3 active users
Grafana Cloud - Advanced
Volume Discounts
custom data usage custom active users
Grafana - Enterprise Stack
Custom Pricing
Team
$10
per month per user
Business
$50
per month per user
Enterprise
Custom Quote
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GrafanaRetool
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GrafanaRetool
Features
GrafanaRetool
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
8.0
Ratings
5% below category average
Retool
-
Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
6.8
Ratings
16% below category average
Retool
-
Ratings
Drill-down analysis6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
8.4
Ratings
0% below category average
Retool
-
Ratings
Publish to Web7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Versioning9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
7.7
Ratings
6% below category average
Retool
-
Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive Analytics7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Low-Code Development
Comparison of Low-Code Development features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
-
Ratings
Retool
8.2
Ratings
2% below category average
Drag-and-drop Interfaces00 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Platform Security00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Platform User Management00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Reusability00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Platform Scalability00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GrafanaRetool
Small Businesses
Supermetrics
Supermetrics
Score 10.0 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Supermetrics
Supermetrics
Score 10.0 out of 10
Quixy
Quixy
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Dataiku
Dataiku
Score 7.6 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GrafanaRetool
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
GrafanaRetool
Likelihood to Recommend
Just about any organization with more than one server and more than one cluster as it scales very well. Configuration of the application takes time and finesse to fine tune to where the balance of load time and getting data quickly meets. The plugins add load time but fine tuning for the application to meet demand needs nailed down at implementation
Read full review
If you need to build an admin panel or any other backend system, Retool is the right tool for you.
Read full review
Pros
  • Alerting through many different medium as Slack, Email, Webhook etc
  • Beautiful and unlimited number of dashboards to view your metrics and tweak them as you please
  • Log aggregation and powerful Logql to filter and view your logs
  • Microservices monitoring
  • Large number of plugins and data sources to collect your metrics from almost anywhere
Read full review
  • Ease of use - someone with small amount of experience can use it.
  • Adaptability - you can build a lot of things with it.
  • Reliability - works quite well.
Read full review
Cons
  • Documentation needs to be more clarified since it can be confusing for beginners
  • Notification alert message templates need to be simplified
Read full review
  • Some Retool apps can become slow to load or refresh.
  • When multiple team members work on the same app, changes can overwrite each other or break functionality.
  • The UI/UX is pretty basic.
Read full review
Usability
Great usage in terms of monitoring of any application from backend to frontend and even any AWS resource via cloud watch and other connectors. Easy to use and configure personalised dash boarding and alerting features. Cost efficient and easy to setup and run, no mazor scaling challenges in terms of managing and maintaining the stack, easy to configure via Prometheus, influx and other connectors
Read full review
Because even though it is quite intuitive it is not the best tool I have ever seen.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Grafana is more flexible, readily adopts other tools frameworks instead of forcing you to use their agent, doesn't force you into Vendor lock-in, and embraces open source, self-hosted, and Enterprise. Similar companies would like you to use their specific tooling and don't offer nearly as much flexibility. The other thing I like about Grafana is their storage usage is much lower compared to similar tools and competitors
Read full review
We selected Retool because it offers the best balance of usability and power compared to alternatives like Appsmith, ToolJet, and OutSystems. It allows us to build much faster, with broad integrations and strong enterprise features like permissions and environment management. Competing tools were either too limited, required more engineering effort. Overall, retool support has been decent too.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • It has kicked out some of our paid monitoring and visualization tools.
  • Now Monitoring, Visualization and Alerting is being done in a single platform.
  • It made monitoring and visualization very easy for us.
Read full review
  • Good ROI to give our teams the data they need.
  • Some dashboards can be slow so it can take more time/ bandwidth.
  • As apps grow more complex, troubleshooting logic or query dependencies can be time-consuming.
Read full review
ScreenShots