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Best dashboard tools in 2026

Build dashboards over metrics, logs and traces from one or many data sources. This list has the top 5 of 9 dashboard tools, ranked by a published score. Of these, 4 are open source, 4 have a free plan and 4 can be self-hosted. Checked by hand on 30 September 2026.

How this list is ranked

Each active tool gets a score out of 100. Archived, end-of-sale and maintenance-only tools are left out.

  • Capabilities: up to 75 points for the share of the category checklist that the tool's own documentation confirms. A tool meeting 8 of 10 items gets 60.
  • Free to start: 15 points for a free plan or a free edition.
  • Open or self-hostable: 10 points if it is open source or can be self-hosted.

Each category has a fixed checklist of capabilities (shown in the table below and on every tool page). An item counts only when the tool's own documentation confirms it; anything we could not confirm counts as not met. How long a tool has existed is deliberately not scored, so a new tool is not ranked below an older one for being new. Tools with the same score share a rank (shown as =), are listed A to Z within it, and the list never cuts between them. Nobody pays for a position.

  1. 1

    Grafana

    Open source dashboards and alerting over Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, SQL databases and many other data sources.

    Free plan Open source (AGPL-3.0) Self-hosted DashboardsMetrics
    100 8 of 8 capabilities (75), free 15, open 10
  2. 2

    Nightingale

    Open source alerting and dashboard platform that sits on Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics, Elasticsearch and other sources, with alert rules and notification routing.

    Free plan Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted MetricsDashboardsAlert routing
    81 6 of 8 capabilities (56), free 15, open 10
  3. 3

    Amazon Managed Grafana

    Fully managed Grafana workspaces on AWS with IAM Identity Center login and built-in CloudWatch, Prometheus and X-Ray data sources, billed per active user.

    Paid DashboardsCloud
    75 8 of 8 capabilities (75), free 0, open 0
  4. =4

    Elastic Stack (ELK)

    Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana and Beats: full-text indexing and search of logs with Kibana dashboards and alerting. Self-host the free distribution or buy Elastic Cloud.

    Free plan Open source (AGPL-3.0-only OR SSPL-1.0 OR Elastic-2.0) Self-hosted LogsDashboardsMetricsAPM
    72 5 of 8 capabilities (47), free 15, open 10
  5. =4

    Perses

    CNCF open source dashboard tool with an open dashboard specification: Prometheus, Tempo and Loki panels, dashboards as code, and Kubernetes-native deployment.

    Free Open source (Apache-2.0) Self-hosted DashboardsMetrics
    72 5 of 8 capabilities (47), free 15, open 10

Side by side

Tool Pricing Free plan Open source Self-hosted Many data sourcesPrometheus sourceSQL sourcesAlertingTemplate variablesDashboards as codeSharingAnnotations
Grafana Free plan Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes
Nightingale Free plan Yes Yes Yes YesYesYesYes--YesYes
Amazon Managed Grafana Paid No No No YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes
Elastic Stack (ELK) Free plan Yes Yes Yes ---YesYesYesYesYes
Perses Free Yes Yes Yes YesYesYes-YesYes--

Yes: confirmed in the tool's documentation. No: documented as not offered. -: not confirmed. Plans and prices change; check each tool's own site before you decide.

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