Dev Toolsdocker-ready1-click-deploy

Grafana: the best Open Source alternative to Datadog in 2026

Grafana visualizes metrics, logs and traces from almost any data source in highly customizable dashboards, the de facto standard for self-hosted observability versus Datadog.

License AGPL-3.0 ~66k stars (estimated)Website Try Demo GitHub Repository

Technical profile

License: AGPL-3.0
Category: Dev Tools
Replaces: Datadog
Tech stack: GoReact

Preview

Public image provided by Grafana on its own website.

Key features

Dashboards connected to dozens of data sources
Multichannel alerting
Logs and traces explorer

Grafana vs. Datadog

Pros

The industry standard for observability dashboards

Things to consider

You need Prometheus/Loki/Tempo separately for data collection

Quick Docker installation guide

Copy this docker-compose.yml, adjust the example passwords and run docker compose up -d on your server. See the full step-by-step guide →

docker-compose.yml

version: "3.9"
services:
  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      - GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD=change-me
    volumes:
      - grafana_data:/var/lib/grafana
volumes:
  grafana_data: