Grafana is an open-source monitoring and data-visualization platform designed to make sense of large volumes of time-series data. It was created in 2014 by Torkel Ödegaard, who named it after graph—the core element of data visualization—combined with a Scandinavian-style suffix, reflecting both function and origin. Grafana Labs now leads the development.
Grafana connects to diverse data sources such as Prometheus, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, and cloud monitoring tools and turns raw metrics into interactive dashboards, charts, and alerts. It allows teams to observe system health, detect anomalies, and respond to issues in real time.
In the real world, Grafana is used by SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) teams to monitor application uptime, by DevOps teams to track CI/CD performance, by enterprises to visualize cloud costs, and by utilities and healthcare organizations to monitor infrastructure and operational metrics—turning complex data into actionable insight.
Story behind the logo
The Grafana logo, featuring a stylized G with sunburst, symbolizes insight emerging from data complexity. Its radiating segments represent shedding light on dark or complex system metrics, converging into a clear, central view, reflecting Grafana’s role in transforming raw metrics into meaningful visualizations. The warm gradient evokes energy, urgency, and continuous motion, aligning with real-time monitoring and alerting. The logo captures the essence of Grafana Labs: illuminating system behavior, revealing patterns quickly, and helping teams act decisively through observability.
