Grafana Labs vs. Timescale: A data-backed comparison

Explore Grafana Labs and Timescale’s features, pricing, adoption trends, and ideal use cases to help you determine which tool best fits your team.

Grafana Labs vs. Timescale at a glance

Grafana Labs integrates with many data sources for observability, analytics, and alerting. Timescale is a time-series database focused on scalable storage and advanced queries.

Grafana Labs is a good fit for teams seeking unified data visualizations and custom dashboards, while Timescale is better for organizations needing time-series data storage and flexible analytics.

Metrics

Grafana Labs

Timescale

Relative cost

85% lower cost than category average

12% lower cost than category average

Adoption trend

10% QoQ adoption growth

7% QoQ adoption growth

Primary user segment

–

–

Best for

Micro businesses that need observability and monitoring dashboards without the complexity of enterprise-level infrastructure management systems.

Micro businesses that need time-series database capabilities without the complexity of enterprise-level data infrastructure systems.

Grafana Labs overview

Grafana Labs allows teams to create custom dashboards and set up alerting for a wide range of data sources. With a strong open-source foundation, Grafana Labs enables organizations to unify monitoring across infrastructure, applications, and business metrics.

Grafana Labs is well-suited for teams that want extensible visual analytics and unified observability in a single place.

Grafana Labs key features

Features

Description

Dashboard visualization

Creates interactive dashboards for real-time monitoring.

Multi-data source integration

Connects to various databases and cloud services.

Alerting and notifications

Supports advanced alerting and multi-channel notifications.

User and team management

Provides granular access control and permissions.

Plugin ecosystem

Extends Grafana with community and enterprise plugins.

Timescale overview

Timescale delivers a SQL-based time-series database that extends PostgreSQL to efficiently store and query massive volumes of time-stamped data. It offers automated partitioning, advanced analytics, and seamless scaling for workloads such as observability, telemetry, and IoT.

Teams can use native SQL queries and benefit from PostgreSQL compatibility, making integration with existing tools straightforward. Timescale is a good fit for organizations that require flexible analytics, scalable storage, and integration with the broader PostgreSQL ecosystem.

Timescale key features

Features

Description

Time-series data management

Stores and manages high-volume time-stamped data.

PostgreSQL compatibility

Extends Postgres with time-series optimizations and SQL support.

Advanced compression

Reduces storage costs for long-term data retention.

Continuous aggregation

Speeds up analytics with pre-computed aggregates.

Automated data retention policies

Simplifies data lifecycle and compliance management.

Pros and cons

Tool

Pros

Cons

Grafana Labs

  • Highly customizable, open-source dashboards.
  • Integrates with a wide range of data sources.
  • Robust alerting and notification features.
  • Vibrant community and plugin ecosystem.
  • Some advanced features require paid tiers.
  • Can be complex to set up for beginners.
  • No native data collection or storage in the base product.
  • Enterprise support comes at a higher price.

Timescale

  • Built on reliable PostgreSQL with familiar SQL.
  • Scalable for high-ingest time-series data.
  • Advanced compression and storage optimization.
  • Suitable for real-time analytics and monitoring.
  • Some advanced features require paid plans.
  • Not purpose-built for non-SQL environments.
  • May require Postgres expertise for complex use cases.
  • Limited built-in visualization options.

Which tool is better?

Grafana Labs is well-suited for teams looking for unified, customizable dashboards across diverse data sources, while Timescale is better for organizations focused on time-series data storage and flexible, high-volume analytics.

When Grafana Labs is the better choice

  • Your team needs to unify data from multiple sources into a single dashboard.
  • Your team needs flexible, open-source visualizations and custom alerting.
  • Your team needs integrations with a wide range of observability and monitoring tools.
  • Your team needs to tailor dashboards to specific workflows or users.

When Timescale is the better choice

  • Your team needs scalable, high-performance time-series data storage.
  • Your team needs to run complex SQL queries on time-stamped event data.
  • Your team needs efficient analytics for observability, telemetry, or IoT workloads.
  • Your team needs native PostgreSQL compatibility and easy integration with existing tools.

Time is money. Save both.