Grafana is everywhere, and deservedly so: it will visualize almost any data source, the plugin ecosystem is enormous, and the open-source edition has become the default way teams look at their metrics. What it isn't is finished. You bring the storage, you build the dashboards, you write the alert rules, and you tune them forever — and when an alert fires it still pages a human to decide whether it mattered. Plexus is the other model: storage, dashboards, and autonomous triage as one platform that works on connect, makes the signal-versus-noise call for you, and shows its reasoning on every one.
Grafana is a open-source dashboards & visualization. Grafana is the stack you assemble and tune yourself; Plexus is a finished platform that includes the storage, the dashboards, and the triage — and can run on the same Prometheus if you keep Grafana for the views you've built. This page is written by Plexus, so read it with that in mind — we’ve tried to be straight about where Grafana is the better choice. Last updated June 2026.
Keep Grafana for the dashboards you've lovingly built — Plexus can read the same Prometheus or Thanos underneath, so you lose none of them. What changes is the monitoring itself: instead of assembling a store, a visualization layer, and alert rules and tuning them against alert fatigue, the triage is done for you and every call is auditable. Plenty of teams keep Grafana for bespoke views and let Plexus run the on-call.
● full · ◐ partial · ○ not today
| Capability | Plexus | Grafana |
|---|---|---|
Bespoke dashboard-building across many data sources Grafana is the gold standard for building any dashboard across any source. Plexus ships focused product views, not a general dashboard builder. | ◐ | ● |
Plugin and data-source ecosystem Grafana's plugin catalog is vast and mature; Plexus integrates with far fewer sources today. | ○ | ● |
Open-source and self-host ubiquity Grafana OSS runs nearly everywhere; Plexus is self-hostable but young. | ◐ | ● |
Finished platform out of the box (storage + dashboards + alerting, no assembly) Grafana is pieces you wire together and tune; Plexus works on connect. | ● | ○ |
Built-in time-series storage Grafana visualizes other stores; Plexus includes one — and can also read yours. | ● | ○ |
Resolves alert noise on its own rather than forwarding it Grafana alerting forwards firing conditions to a human; it doesn't decide what's worth a page or show why. | ● | ○ |
Reasons about the faults behind the metrics, not just charts them Grafana shows you the chart; Plexus correlates the underlying fault and attaches a likely cause and a next step. | ● | ◐ |
Runs on your existing Prometheus / Thanos Both read the same store, so you can keep Grafana alongside Plexus. | ● | ● |
Pick Grafana Pick Grafana if you want to build and own bespoke dashboards across many data sources, you value the enormous plugin ecosystem, and you have the team to assemble and tune the alerting yourself. For custom visualization, nothing is more flexible.
Pick Plexus Pick Plexus if you want monitoring that works on connect — storage, dashboards, and autonomous triage that makes the signal-versus-noise call for you and shows its work — rather than wiring a store, Grafana, and alert rules together and tuning them against alert fatigue forever. You can keep Grafana for dashboards either way.
For monitoring and alerting, yes — Grafana is a dashboards-and-alerting stack you assemble and tune, and Plexus is a finished platform that includes storage, dashboards, and autonomous triage out of the box. For building highly custom dashboards across many data sources, Grafana's builder is still broader, and some teams keep it for exactly that while letting Plexus run the monitoring.
Yes. Plexus can read the same Prometheus or Thanos that backs your Grafana dashboards, so you lose nothing you've built. What you stop doing is hand-assembling and tuning the alerting layer — Plexus does the triage and shows its reasoning on every call.
Plexus includes a time-series store, so you don't have to stand one up. If you already store metrics in Prometheus, Thanos, or ClickHouse, Plexus can read those directly with no migration.
It does the signal-versus-noise triage for you. Grafana visualizes metrics and fires alert rules you write and maintain; Plexus decides which alerts are real, attaches a root cause and a next step to each, and logs why the rest were held — all out of the box, instead of pages of alert rules that still wake a human to sort them out.