The main difference between Grafana, Coralogix, and CubeAPM lies in how each balances visibility, control, and cost. Grafana offers flexible dashboards through its LGTM stack (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir), while Coralogix focuses on AI-driven log analytics and dynamic data pipelines. Both platforms deliver strong telemetry coverage—but their costs and complexity scale fast as workloads grow.

As systems expand across microservices and regions, teams often face a difficult trade-off: cloud-hosted tools like Coralogix simplify setup but store data outside your environment, raising compliance concerns, while self-managed stacks like Grafana demand constant maintenance and tuning.

CubeAPM eliminates that compromise. It’s an OpenTelemetry-native, full-stack MELT platform that runs inside your own VPC or on-prem but is managed like SaaS. With smart sampling (≈95 % compression), unlimited retention, and predictable $0.15 / GB ingestion pricing, teams cut observability spend by up to 80 % while keeping complete data control and achieving faster MTTR.

Grafana vs Coralogix vs CubeAPM Comparison

Grafana vs Coralogix vs CubeAPM: Feature-by-Feature Breakdown

Multi-Agent Support

CubeAPM: supports multiple agents out of the box — including OpenTelemetry, Datadog, New Relic, Elastic, and Prometheus. This makes it ideal for hybrid and migration use cases where teams gradually transition from legacy APMs to an OpenTelemetry-native setup.

Grafana: supports OpenTelemetry and Prometheus collectors, but deeper integration often depends on configuring Loki, Tempo, and Mimir individually, which increases setup complexity.
Coralogix offers limited flexibility, primarily supporting OpenTelemetry and Prometheus agents, restricting larger enterprises running multi-agent or mixed environments.

MELT Support (Metrics, Events, Logs & Traces)

CubeAPM: delivers full-stack MELT coverage in a single backend — metrics, events, logs, and traces are correlated automatically. This unified view helps teams cut mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) by up to 40% and achieve true full-stack visibility across microservices.
Grafana: offers partial MELT visibility through its modular LGTM stack. While powerful, it requires separate setup for Loki (logs), Tempo (traces), and Mimir (metrics), often leading to fragmented maintenance and rising data costs.
Coralogix: provides strong MELT coverage but charges separately for each data type — logs, traces, metrics, and AI features — creating unpredictable costs as data grows.

Setup and Deployment

CubeAPM: runs self-hosted inside your VPC or on-prem, giving teams complete data ownership and compliance with regulations. It’s managed like SaaS, meaning no Day-2 operations — scaling, upgrades, and patches are automated.
Grafana: can be deployed as a cloud service or self-hosted, but self-management demands significant infrastructure and tuning. Cloud hosting simplifies setup but stores telemetry outside your environment.
Coralogix: is fully SaaS-based, offering fast onboarding and an on-prem option.

Pricing and Cost for Different Team Sizes

CubeAPM offers the most predictable cost model at $0.15/GB ingestion — flat, transparent, and unified across all telemetry types. Here is a simple cost breakdown for small, medium, and large teams:

Cost for Small Teams (~30 hosts):

• CubeAPM: $2,080/month
• Grafana: ~$3,870/month
• Coralogix: ~$6,170/month

Cost for Mid-Sized Teams (~125 hosts):

• CubeAPM: $7,200/month
• Grafana: ~$11,875/month
• Coralogix: ~$21,700/month

Cost for Large Teams (~250 hosts):

• CubeAPM: $15,200/month
• Grafana: ~$26,750/month
• Coralogix: ~$45,500/month

Teams migrating to CubeAPM typically see 60–80% lower total cost of ownership compared to modular Grafana Cloud and Coralogix’s per-stream billing.

CubeAPM: Cost for Small, Medium, and Large Teams

CubeAPM keeps pricing simple — $0.15 per GB of data ingested, covering all telemetry types (logs, metrics, traces, and events). There are no user license fees, no hidden infrastructure costs, and no retention limits. This transparent model makes CubeAPM ideal for teams that want predictable budgets without paying extra for scale or compliance.

CubeAPM Pricing

• Flat pricing of $0.15/GB ingested

Estimated Monthly Costs

• Small teams (~30 hosts): $2,080
• Mid-sized teams (~125 hosts): $7,200
• Large teams (~250 hosts): $15,200

Teams migrating from legacy APMs or cloud-hosted observability tools typically save 60–80% on total observability spend, while gaining complete data ownership inside their own VPC or on-prem setup.

Grafana Cloud: Cost for Small, Medium, and Large Teams

Grafana follows a modular pricing approach where each service is billed separately — Grafana Cloud Pro ($19/month), Logs ($0.50/GB), and Traces ($0.50/GB). This flexibility works well for small or static workloads, but costs rise steeply as telemetry grows since every data stream adds to the bill.

Grafana Cloud Pricing

• Logs: $0.50/GB ingested
• Traces: $0.50/GB ingested
• Pro Plan Base: $19/month
• Retention: 13 months (Pro tier)
• Support: Community + paid enterprise SLAs

Estimated Monthly Costs

• Small teams (~30 hosts): $3,870
• Mid-sized teams (~125 hosts): $11,875
• Large teams (~250 hosts): $26,750

Grafana’s modular model offers great flexibility but becomes harder to control beyond a few terabytes of ingestion. It’s best suited for teams that prioritize visualization and dashboarding over end-to-end observability.

Coralogix: Cost for Small, Medium, and Large Teams

Coralogix uses a pipeline-based pricing model that segments telemetry into different tiers for search, monitoring, and archiving. While this provides cost optimization flexibility, each data type — logs, traces, metrics, and AI — is priced separately, which can make scaling unpredictable.

Coralogix Pricing

• Logs: $0.52/GB ingested
• Traces: $0.44/GB ingested
• Metrics: $0.05/GB ingested
• AI Features: $1.5 per 1M tokens
• Retention: 365 days (Essential plan)
• Support: Tiered SLA-based

Estimated Monthly Costs

• Small teams (~30 hosts): $3,800
• Mid-sized teams (~125 hosts): $9,700
• Large teams (~250 hosts): $22,500

Coralogix performs well for AI-assisted log analysis, but the tiered pricing and separate billing for each stream can increase total cost of ownership for high-volume workloads.

Sampling Strategy

CubeAPM uses Smart Sampling — context-aware retention that preserves latency, error, and anomaly traces while compressing redundant data by up to 95%. This helps maintain accuracy while controlling cost and storage.
Grafana relies on probabilistic sampling per component (Tempo/Loki), requiring manual tuning and offering limited contextual retention.
Coralogix applies flow-based sampling that prioritizes frequently accessed data but may miss low-frequency anomalies unless upgraded to higher-cost tiers.

Data Retention

CubeAPM: provides unlimited log and trace retention with zero additional storage fees — all data stays within your own cloud or data center.
Grafana Cloud: retains logs for up to 13 months in its Pro plan, and extending beyond that incurs additional cost.
Coralogix: retains data for 365 days in the Essential plan; longer retention requires enterprise upgrades, often at higher per-GB rates.

Support and Response Time

CubeAPM provides real-time support through Slack and WhatsApp directly with core engineers — average response time under 10 minutes, ensuring quick issue resolution during incidents.
Grafana primarily offers community and ticket-based support, with enterprise SLAs available only on higher tiers.
Coralogix includes tier-based support with response times under 30 minutes for premium customers, but slower responses on standard plans.

Which Tool Is Best for You? Why Brands Choose CubeAPM

Benefits of Choosing CubeAPM

• Predictable Pricing: A flat $0.15/GB ingestion rate across all telemetry types — no surprise bills, no user or feature fees.
• Unlimited Data Retention: Store metrics, traces, and logs indefinitely without paying extra for long-term storage.
• Smart Sampling Efficiency: Retain all critical latency and error data while achieving up to 95% compression, keeping costs low.
• Self-Hosted, Managed Like SaaS: Deploy inside your own VPC or on-prem for full data control — CubeAPM handles scaling, upgrades, and security patches.
• Unified MELT Coverage: One backend for Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces, eliminating the need for multiple disconnected tools.
• Multi-Agent Compatibility: Seamless integration with OpenTelemetry, Datadog, New Relic, Elastic, and Prometheus agents.
• Real-Time Support: 24×7 Slack and WhatsApp access to CubeAPM engineers with sub-10-minute response time.
• API access: Access all your data via APIs without any additional cost.

Grafana vs Coralogix vs CubeAPM: Use Cases

Choose Grafana if

You already use Prometheus, Loki, or Tempo and need a centralized visualization layer to build dashboards across metrics and logs. Grafana is perfect for DevOps teams managing self-hosted observability stacks who value flexibility and open-source customization.
It’s best suited for teams that:

• Want to visualize time-series data and metrics from multiple sources.
• Already maintain their own infrastructure and collectors.
• Prioritize dashboards and alerting over deep trace or event correlation.
  Grafana is a solid choice for small to mid-sized organizations that can handle operational overhead and prefer open-source flexibility.

Choose Coralogix if

You prefer a fully managed SaaS platform with strong AI-driven log analytics and automated correlation between logs, metrics, and traces. Coralogix works well for teams that don’t want to handle infrastructure management and value fast insights from structured and unstructured data.
It’s best suited for teams that:

• Need real-time anomaly detection and intelligent alerting.
• Operate in environments where cloud-only deployment is acceptable.
• Want to optimize cost by routing data into different “pipelines” for frequent search, monitoring, or compliance.
  Coralogix fits tech companies and digital-native businesses that prioritize ease of use and AI-powered observability, but not strict data residency.

Choose CubeAPM if

You want end-to-end observability without losing data control, retention, or cost predictability. CubeAPM combines the simplicity of SaaS with the sovereignty of on-prem — running inside your own VPC but managed entirely by CubeAPM. It’s ideal for SREs, DevOps, and platform teams running Kubernetes, microservices, or hybrid-cloud environments.
It’s best suited for teams that:

• Need OpenTelemetry-native MELT coverage (Metrics, Events, Logs, Traces) in one backend.
• Operate in regulated industries or regions requiring compliance.
• Want predictable pricing ($0.15/GB) and unlimited retention without host-based billing.
• Are consolidating multiple observability tools (like Datadog, Grafana, or Coralogix) into one unified solution.

CubeAPM is the go-to choice for teams seeking faster MTTR, full data ownership, and 80% lower total observability cost compared to legacy APMs or fragmented stacks.

Conclusion

Both Grafana and Coralogix bring unique strengths to the observability landscape — Grafana offers deep visualization flexibility for open-source stacks, while Coralogix delivers powerful AI-driven log analytics through a fully managed SaaS platform.

However, both come with trade-offs. Grafana adds operational overhead as data scales, and Coralogix’s per-stream billing can quickly inflate costs.

CubeAPM removes those limits. It runs inside your VPC or on-prem, offers unlimited retention, and uses predictable $0.15/GB ingestion pricing with smart sampling and real-time support. For teams seeking full-stack observability, data sovereignty, and simplified scaling, CubeAPM stands as the most complete and future-ready choice.