Grafana Labs licensing covers three different licensing regimes that apply to the same family of observability software. The company’s core projects, Grafana (dashboards and visualization), Grafana Loki (logs) and Grafana Tempo (traces), have been licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3) since 2021. Before that they were under the Apache License 2.0.[1][2] Grafana Labs also sells Grafana Enterprise, a proprietary self-managed edition, and Grafana Cloud, a hosted service priced on usage.[5][6] The contracting entity is Raintank, Inc. dba Grafana Labs.[3]
For a software asset manager, the questions are different for each regime. For the open-source projects, the question is whether a modified copy is distributed or offered over a network. For Grafana Enterprise, it is how many users have signed in during the last 30 days and on which instances. For Grafana Cloud, it is how much telemetry, and how many active users, each product meters in a month.
Editions
| Offering | Licence | Licensed as | Deeper article |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grafana, Loki, Tempo, Mimir, Pyroscope, k6 (open source) | AGPLv3; plugins, agents and some libraries Apache 2.0[1][14][16][12] | No fee; licence conditions | Grafana Labs AGPLv3 relicensing |
| Grafana Enterprise binary, free features | Grafana Labs License Agreement[4] | No charge | same |
| Grafana Enterprise (self-managed) | MSA and Order Form with a licence file[3][5] | Active users, production instances, root URL, expiry date | Grafana Enterprise licensing |
| Grafana Cloud Free | Terms and MSA | Free allowances per product[6] | Grafana Cloud pricing and usage |
| Grafana Cloud Pro | MSA, self-serve | USD 19 a month plus usage[6] | same |
| Grafana Cloud Enterprise | MSA and Order Form | Annual spend commit from USD 25,000[6] | same |
The Terms of Service state that use of Grafana Labs’ proprietary Software, “including with a free trial”, is governed by the Master Services Agreement (MSA) or another written licence agreement.[8] Catalog rows: Grafana Cloud Free, Grafana Cloud Pro, Grafana Cloud Enterprise, Grafana Enterprise subscription.
Metrics
Grafana Cloud has “no single meter across the platform”. Each product bills against its own unit, “such as active series for metrics, gigabytes for logs, and host hours for Application Observability”.[7]
| Unit | Catalog row | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 billable series | Billable series, Active series, Data points per minute (DPM) | Grafana Cloud Metrics |
| GB | GB processed, GB written | Logs, Traces, Profiles |
| Monthly active user | Monthly active user (Grafana Cloud), Active IRM user, Active AI user | Visualization, IRM, Grafana Assistant |
| Host hour, container hour | Host hour, Container hour | Application, Kubernetes and Database Observability |
| Virtual user hour | Virtual user hour (VUH) | Grafana Cloud k6 |
| 1,000 sessions; 10,000 test executions | Frontend Observability session, Synthetic test execution | Frontend Observability, Synthetics |
| Active user over 30 days; instance | Grafana Enterprise active user, Grafana Enterprise production instance | Self-managed Grafana Enterprise |
Grafana Enterprise defines an active user as “a user who has signed in to Grafana within the last 30 days”, in a rolling window updated daily.[5] Grafana Cloud bills users who sign in during the calendar month.[6]
Counting / floors
Grafana Cloud. Usage is calculated per calendar month.[13] Metrics are billed on the higher of active series and data points per minute, measured at the 95th percentile, which “forgives the top five percent of usage time in each calendar month”.[13] The Free plan and the Pro platform fee both include allowances for each product: 10k active series, 50 GB each of logs, traces and profiles, three active users and 500 virtual user hours a month, for example.[6] Catalog proof: Metrics usage is the higher of active series and DPM at the 95th percentile; Grafana Cloud users are billed only if they sign in during the month, once across stacks.
Grafana Enterprise. A licence carries a maximum number of active users. When it is reached, “only currently active users” can sign in.[5] Licensed users form a shared pool across production instances. A user who signs in to two production instances consumes two users.[5] Catalog proof: Grafana Enterprise active users are counted over a rolling 30 days; At the active user limit new users cannot sign in; Licensed users are a shared pool across production instances.
Contracts. Under the MSA, a customer “shall purchase sufficient licenses and/or usage rights to cover its usage”. Excess Usage may be invoiced “at the then-current applicable list price and without benefit of any otherwise applicable discount”.[3] Catalog proof: Excess Usage is invoiced at list price without discount and may be audited.
Virtualization & partitioning
No processor, core or partitioning rules appear in the documents retrieved. Grafana Enterprise counts users and instances. Each production instance comes with “a paired development instance and a paired test instance”.[5] The licence is bound to the instance’s root URL, not to hardware.[5] In Grafana Cloud, products that bill on host hours meter only while a host is active. A host that runs for part of the month therefore costs a fraction of one that runs all month.[7] Catalog proof: Each production instance includes paired development and test instances; A Grafana Enterprise licence works only at its licensed root URL; Host hours meter active time, and containers or pods are not hosts.
Cloud / BYOL
Grafana Enterprise licences can be bought from Grafana Labs or through AWS Marketplace.[5] Grafana Cloud can be subscribed through AWS, Azure or Google Cloud marketplaces, in which case invoices come from the cloud provider.[13] Grafana Cloud Enterprise offers deployment in “Public Cloud, Federal Cloud, or Bring Your Own Cloud”.[6] The open-source collector Grafana Alloy is under the Apache License 2.0.[11]
Programs
- AGPLv3 open-source licensing, with Apache-2.0 directories listed in each repository’s LICENSING.md.[10]
- Free Grafana Enterprise binary (Grafana Labs License) and Commercial license for AGPL projects, the two non-AGPL routes.[1]
- Flexible Spend Commit, a prepaid commitment drawn down by any generally available Cloud product.[7]
- Grafana Cloud volume discounts, automatic for Pro from 2026-07-01, and the Grafana Cloud 14-day trial, whose usage “is never billed”.[13]
- Grafana Enterprise usage billing, which bills excess active users monthly instead of blocking them.[5]
Contract terms
The MSA (last updated 2025-09-30) grants a licence “solely for Customer’s own internal business purposes”. It forbids making the products available to third parties other than the customer’s Users and bypassing “any User limitations that may be described in any Order Form(s)”.[3] A User includes people authorized to use the products “whether via direct (i.e. with login credentials) or indirect access”.[3] Fees are non-cancelable and are owed for the whole Subscription Term “whether or not actually used”. Subscription Terms renew automatically unless either party gives notice at least 60 days before they end. A renewal at lower volume or for a shorter term is re-priced “without regard to the prior Subscription Term’s per-unit pricing”.[3] Grafana Cloud’s SLA targets 99.5% of requests succeeding each month, with service credits.[9] Catalog proof: Grafana Products may be used only for internal business purposes and user limits may not be bypassed; Users include indirect access; MSA subscriptions auto-renew unless 60 days' notice; reduced renewals are re-priced; MSA fees are non-cancelable and owed for the whole Subscription Term; Grafana Cloud SLA targets 99.5% with service credits.
Audits and compliance
Both the MSA and the Grafana Labs License Agreement give Grafana Labs an audit right on reasonable notice, and both require non-compliance to be addressed within 30 days after the audit.[3][4] Self-managed Grafana Enterprise also checks compliance technically. Its licence token is “renewed every 24 hours by calling the Grafana API”. Instances without internet access must agree other options “for token renewal and license audit”.[5] For AGPL projects, Grafana Labs has said that if it learns of non-compliance by competitors “we will pursue those matters accordingly”.[15] Catalog proof: Grafana Labs may audit use of its licensed software; Licence tokens renew every 24 hours over the internet. See also software license audit.