beacon.sh vs Grafana Cloud
beacon.sh and Grafana Cloud are both uptime & monitoring tools aimed at developers and enterprise. Both have a free plan.
Open-source memory layer that carries lessons across coding agents
Open-source observability dashboards
| Pricing | Open source | Freemium · $19 |
| Starting price | Not published | $19/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | 14 days |
| Built for | Developers, Enterprise, Small businesses | Developers, Enterprise |
| Platforms | macos, windows, linux, web | web |
| Country | US | US · 2014 |
| Rating | — | — |
Choose beacon.sh if
Developers and engineering teams using several AI coding agents who want shared, reviewed memory and a full record of agent activity.
- MIT-licensed core that runs locally without lock-in to one harness
- One timeline for every agent and machine, including token spend
- Turns repeated walkthroughs into skills every agent can reuse
Look elsewhere if: Teams that only need a shared knowledge store for agents and people, or want to train their own models from traces (Context Engine, Overmind).
Choose Grafana Cloud if
Engineering teams comfortable with open-source observability who want control and lower cost.
- Open source with no lock-in
- Generous free cloud tier
- Visualizes almost any data source
Look elsewhere if: Teams wanting turnkey, fully integrated APM (Datadog, New Relic).
beacon.sh vs Grafana Cloud pricing
beacon.sh
- Open source$0MIT-licensed local endpoint, JSONL traces, local dashboard
- Beacon Cloud$020+ agents, 50 findings, session search over MCP, daily digest
- Cloud Pro$20/moBilled annually (save 25%); unlimited findings, memories over MCP
- Cloud Team$30/seat/moBilled annually plus $10/mo base, up to 20 seats, shared traces
- EnterpriseCustomApproval gates, SSO, RBAC, audit logs, your own bucket and region
Grafana Cloud
- Free$010k metrics series, 50 GB logs/traces, 3 users, 14-day retention
- Pro$19/moPlatform fee plus usage; 3 users included, then $8/user
- Enterprise$25,000/yrMinimum annual spend commit; custom retention
beacon.sh · Key features
- Session capture across Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, OpenCode and 20+ other harnesses
- OpenTelemetry-based event model stored as local JSONL by default
- Reviewed memories and skills served to agents over MCP and Agent Skills
- Cloud findings with one-click skills, fix prompts and an evidence trail
- Full session replay with prompts, commands, edits, approvals and tokens
- Terminal trace browser and read-only local dashboard
Cons
- Pro and Team prices are shown only with annual billing
- Team price is listed as $30 per seat in one place and $40 in the comparison table
- Free cloud tier caps findings at 50
Grafana Cloud · Key features
- Dashboards over 150+ data sources
- Prometheus-compatible metrics (Mimir)
- Logs with Loki and traces with Tempo
- Alerting, on-call and incident response
- k6 load testing and synthetic monitoring
- Self-hosted open source or managed cloud
Cons
- More setup than Datadog
- Query languages to learn (PromQL, LogQL)
- Fragmented product surface
beacon.sh vs Grafana Cloud: FAQ
Do beacon.sh and Grafana Cloud have a free plan?
Yes, both beacon.sh and Grafana Cloud have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.
Which is better for small businesses, beacon.sh or Grafana Cloud?
beacon.sh lists small businesses as a core audience, while Grafana Cloud is aimed more at developers and enterprise.