One install,
or a stack to assemble.
The Grafana stack is the most popular way to self-host observability, and for good reason. It's also several systems to deploy, scale, upgrade and keep working together. Ultraviolet is one.
The short version
Choose the Grafana stack if
- You want maximum flexibility and the largest ecosystem of data sources and plugins.
- Dashboards are central to how your teams work.
- You have people to run several systems — or you'll use Grafana Cloud.
Choose Ultraviolet if
- You want one product to install, upgrade and back up, not one per signal.
- You want session replay, synthetic checks and AI investigation self-hosted, without a cloud subscription.
- You'd rather one vendor answered for the whole thing.
Side by side
| Ultraviolet | Grafana | |
|---|---|---|
| What you install and run | UltravioletOne product: the core and a collector per node | GrafanaA system per signal — Grafana, Loki, Tempo, Mimir, Pyroscope — plus Alloy and Beyla for collection, each with its own storage and scaling |
| Source code | UltravioletCommercial | GrafanaOpen source — AGPL-3.0 for the main projects, Apache 2.0 for Beyla, Alloy and Faro |
| Price, self-hosted | Ultraviolet$25 per node per month, everything included | GrafanaFree; Grafana Enterprise for commercial features and support |
| Seeing services without code changes | UltravioletYes | GrafanaYes, with Beyla |
| Dashboards | UltravioletBuilt in, for the views most teams need | GrafanaThe most flexible there is — Grafana's home ground |
| Session replay | UltravioletYes, self-hosted | GrafanaGrafana Cloud only |
| Synthetic monitoring | UltravioletYes, self-hosted | GrafanaGrafana Cloud product; self-hosted means assembling your own (for example the blackbox exporter or k6) |
| AI investigation | UltravioletIncluded; a model you host, or none | GrafanaGrafana Assistant in self-managed Grafana connects to a Grafana Cloud stack; its investigations are Grafana Cloud only |
What running it involves
A self-hosted Grafana stack is a set of excellent, separate projects: Grafana for dashboards, Loki for logs, Tempo for traces, Mimir for metrics, Pyroscope for profiles, Alloy to collect, and Beyla to see services without code changes. Each has its own storage, scaling, configuration and upgrade path, and getting them to work as one — so a trace leads to its logs — is your team's job.
Ultraviolet is one install: a core in your cluster and a collector on each node. Traces, logs, metrics, profiles, alerts and dashboards share one store and one interface, connected from the start. You upgrade it as one thing, verified, from its own Updates page.
What's self-hosted, and what's in the cloud
Some of Grafana Labs' newer features live in Grafana Cloud. Session replay is a Grafana Cloud feature, and its synthetic monitoring is a Grafana Cloud product — private probes run in your network but report to Grafana Cloud. The Grafana Assistant can be added to self-managed Grafana, connected to a Grafana Cloud stack, without its investigations. Self-hosted, you'd assemble alternatives yourself. In Ultraviolet, real user monitoring with session replay, synthetic checks and AI investigation all run in your environment, air-gapped included.
Where the Grafana stack is the better choice
Flexibility and ecosystem. Grafana connects to almost any data source, its dashboards are the most capable anywhere, and its community is enormous. If your teams live in dashboards, or need to bring many different systems together in one view, nothing is broader.
Price, if you have the people. The open-source stack costs nothing to license. What it costs is the time to run it well.
Trying both
Ultraviolet's live demo runs on a real cluster with real traffic, no sales call needed — a quick way to see whether one install covers what your stack does today.
Claims about Grafana were checked against its public documentation and pricing on October 15, 2026. Products and prices change — we're happy to walk through a current, specific comparison on a call.
- Grafana Cloud Session Replay
- Grafana Cloud Synthetic Monitoring — private probes
- Grafana Assistant in self-managed Grafana
- Grafana Beyla
- Grafana, Loki, Tempo, Mimir and Pyroscope repositories (licenses)
Grafana, Loki, Tempo, Mimir and Pyroscope are trademarks of Grafana Labs. Ultraviolet Observability is not affiliated with Grafana.
Run it in your own cluster this week.
A 30-minute call, then an evaluation core on your infrastructure. You will see your own services, traces and logs — from your own traffic — before you decide anything.
- No data leaves your environment, including during the trial
- Helm install, works fully air-gapped
- You talk to the engineers who built it