Grafana Faro (OSS) Pricing 2026: Self-Hosted, Infra Cost Only
Grafana Faro RUM SDK is open-source under Apache 2.0. Self-host the data path at zero per-session SaaS cost, or use Grafana Cloud as backend. Grafana Cloud Free: 50GB logs + 10K active series + 50GB traces with 14-day retention. Pro: $19/month platform fee plus per-GB usage charges. Enterprise: $25K/year minimum commit.
The fast facts
| Pricing model | self-hosted |
| Cheapest paid | $0/mo (Self-hosted (free) or Grafana Cloud Free) |
| Per 1,000 sessions | , |
| Per GB ingest | , |
| Per 1,000 replays | , |
| Free tier | Grafana Cloud Free: 50GB logs + 10K metrics series + 50GB traces, 14-day retention |
| Session replay | none |
| Retention | 14 days |
| Annual discount | Not published |
| Source | grafana.com/pricing/ |
The pricing model
Open-source RUM SDK and collector under Apache 2.0. Self-host on your own Grafana stack at zero per-session SaaS cost, or use Grafana Cloud as backend (Pro: $19/month platform fee plus per-GB usage charges).
Genuinely open source
Grafana Faro is published as open-source under Apache 2.0, the SDK (Faro Web SDK), the collector (Grafana Alloy with Faro receiver), and the supporting Grafana app for visualisation. There is no source-available clause, no commercial-use restriction, no contributor licence agreement gotcha.
Path 1, Grafana Cloud as backend
Keep the Faro SDK on the front-end and ingest into Grafana Cloud's managed Loki, Mimir, and Tempo.
- Free tier: 50GB logs + 10K active series metrics + 50GB traces, 14-day retention. Generous for hobby and small commercial use.
- Pro tier: $19/month platform fee plus per-GB usage charges: $0.05/GB process + $0.40/GB write + $0.10/GB retain for Logs and Tempo. Metrics Pro adds $6.50 per 1K series above the included quota with 13-month retention.
- Enterprise: starts at $25,000/year minimum commit with custom deployment.
Path 2, self-hosted
Run Grafana, Loki (logs), Mimir (metrics), and Tempo (traces) on your own infrastructure. The Faro collector forwards browser telemetry into those backends. Cost: server infrastructure + operations.
- Realistic minimum: $200-$500/month infrastructure for a small production cluster.
- Operations effort: 0.25-1 FTE engineering for cluster management, version upgrades, capacity planning.
- All-in self-hosted production cost: typically $30K-$60K/year.
No session replay
Grafana Faro captures Core Web Vitals, page load timing, JavaScript errors with source maps, custom events, and distributed-trace propagation into backend APM. It does not capture session replay. For teams that need replay, pair Faro with a replay-specific tool (sentry-self-hosted is the cheapest replay-capable open-source option).
The integration story is the killer feature
Faro's real strength is integration into the broader Grafana observability stack. Front-end RUM data lands in the same Loki/Tempo/Mimir backends as backend APM traces, infrastructure metrics, and application logs. Cross-product investigations ('LCP spiked at 14:00, was it the backend deploy?') run as Grafana dashboards with no SDK integration required between products. For teams already on Grafana Stack, Faro is the obvious RUM choice.
How Grafana Faro compares
- Versus Elastic Browser RUM, both are infrastructure-cost-only RUM with existing-stack assumption. Grafana is more open-source-pure (Apache 2.0 vs Elastic License v2), Elastic has stronger logs + APM maturity.
- Versus sentry-self-hosted, both are open-source. Sentry self-hosted includes session replay, Grafana Faro does not. Sentry self-hosted has higher operational complexity.
- Versus Cloudflare Web Analytics, Cloudflare is free hosted SaaS with no operations cost. Faro is free open-source with significant operations cost. Cloudflare wins for simplicity, Faro wins for data ownership and integration.
- Versus Datadog RUM, opposite ends of the trade-off curve. Datadog is operationally simple and expensive, Faro is operationally complex and infrastructure-cost-only.
When Grafana Faro is the right choice
- You already run Grafana, Prometheus, or Loki for backend observability.
- You have data-residency or compliance requirements that prohibit SaaS RUM vendors.
- You have the operations capacity (0.25-1 FTE) to run the Grafana Stack.
- Your ingest volume justifies self-hosting (typically 500GB+/month).
When Grafana Faro is the wrong choice
- You need session replay (Faro doesn't offer it).
- You don't already run Grafana Stack, adopting it just for RUM is uneconomical.
- You lack operations capacity for cluster management.
- You want managed-SaaS simplicity.
For Grafana on the broader observability stack, see our sister site's Grafana Cloud pricing breakdown. For other open-source RUM options including Boomerang.js and sentry-self-hosted, see open-source RUM.
Try it in the calculator
The RUM cost calculator includes Grafana Labs alongside 17 other vendors. Enter your monthly page views, session replay coverage, retention, and sampling rate to see how Grafana Labs's pricing compares head-to-head against the alternatives.
Where to go next
- Multi-vendor calculator — estimate Grafana Labs's cost against 17 alternatives at your specific workload.
- Per-session pricing models — how Grafana Labs's pricing model compares structurally to Datadog, Dynatrace, and Raygun.
- Quote-only vendors — the five RUM vendors that don't publish prices and the operational consequences.
- Hidden RUM costs — sampling, retention storage, replay storage, and overage gotchas across the category.
- Methodology — how we verified the Grafana Labs pricing data shown above (verified 2026-06-16).