Grafana 13.1.7, the open source dashboard and alerting layer, deploys in one click onto a dedicated server Selfhost.dev provisions, secures and runs. You pay for that server and nothing per user: three people or three hundred, the bill stays the same.
One container, not a cluster, with its administrator set before first boot. Six locations on three continents.
Grafana OSS running on a server you control instead of in a vendor's account. Dashboards, users and alert rules live on your disk.
Teams with metrics in Prometheus, Postgres, ClickHouse or a cloud API who want one place to read them, usually with more readers than builders.
When a per-user bill grows faster than the systems it watches or when dashboards must stay inside your own boundary. Inside Grafana Cloud's free tier? Stay there.
Grafana's own Docker guide runs grafana/grafana-enterprise with no version tag, signs you in as admin/admin and leaves the proxy and the root URL to you. On this template each is settled before the container first boots.
A single Grafana instance is one Go binary with an embedded SQLite database. There is no worker, no queue and no cache to run, which is why it deploys in about five minutes on 4 GB, the smallest server we offer.
SQLite suits one small instance; for production, Grafana recommends MySQL or PostgreSQL. Deploy Grafana (Postgres) for that: the same image plus a bundled postgres:16-alpine on the same server. That Postgres is not one of our managed databases.
Your team, wall displays and alert receivers
TLS and routing
Grafana 13.1.7
SQLite
Admin password
| Grafana on Docker, by hand | Grafana on Selfhost.dev |
|---|---|
Run grafana/grafana-enterprise, untagged | Pinned to grafana/grafana:13.1.7; a restart or redeploy brings back the same build |
Sign in with admin/admin, then change it | GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_USER and GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD set before first boot |
Set GF_SERVER_ROOT_URL or alert links break | Follows the live domain, so alert links and OAuth redirects resolve |
Mount a volume at /var/lib/grafana | Volume grafana-data: the SQLite database, plugins and renders |
| Install a proxy and a certificate | TLS issued and renewed per hostname; port 3000 is never public |
| Open the firewall by hand | Default deny; only 22, 80 and 443 open |
Grafana hosting requirements are light: one container and a volume behind TLS. Grafana queries your data; it does not store your metrics. So 4 GB, the smallest server we offer, is enough. The data source is the part that grows.
One container, one server, no build step.
This page opens the exact console template. Pick one of six locations and submit. The template deploys in about five minutes.
The console shows the administrator username and password set before Grafana first started. Save them; there is no admin/admin to change.
Sign in, connect your first data source, then import a community dashboard by ID or build your own. The instance is empty until you do.
Grafana OSS costs nothing to license, so self hosted Grafana pricing is the machine under it: a European 4 GB server at $0.02/hr, about $15 to $16 a month, billed by the hour against prepaid credits. Users add nothing.
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Grafana OSS, the software | $0. AGPLv3, no licence to buy |
| Users, editors and viewers | $0 at any number |
| Bandwidth | $0. Traffic is included in the server price |
| Optional daily backups | +20% of the server price |
| Server | RAM, cores, disk | Where | Rate | About a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
cx23 (recommended) | 4 GB, 2 cores, 40 GB | Europe | $0.02/hr | $15.18 |
cax11 (ARM) | 4 GB, 2 cores, 40 GB | Europe | $0.02/hr | $16.35 |
cx33 (room to grow) | 8 GB, 4 cores, 80 GB | Europe | $0.03/hr | $23.36 |
cpx21 | 4 GB, 3 cores, 80 GB | US | $0.12/hr | $87.75 |
cpx22 | 4 GB, 2 cores, 80 GB | Singapore | $0.10/hr | $72.56 |
Monthly figures assume 730 hours.
With a card on file or a past top-up, the server is powered off and held for 24 hours, with an email. A top-up in that window restarts it. Welcome-credit-only servers are deleted at zero, so keep your own dashboard exports.
Compare sizes and locations in the calculator, no signup.
Both bill by the person. Grafana Cloud Pro charges $8 per active user beyond the 3 in its $19 monthly fee, plus usage. Amazon charges $9 per active editor and $5 per active viewer. Here the server is the bill.
| Your team | Grafana Cloud Pro | Amazon Managed Grafana | Selfhost.dev |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 people (1 editor, 2 viewers) | $19/mo + usage | $19/mo | $15.18/mo |
| 10 people (2 editors, 8 viewers) | $75/mo + usage | $58/mo | $15.18/mo |
| 30 people (5 editors, 25 viewers) | $235/mo + usage | $170/mo | $15.18/mo |
List prices from grafana.com/pricing and aws.amazon.com/grafana/pricing. An active user is anyone who signs in that month. Ours is a European cx23 at 730 hours.
Inside the free tier, stay there. Grafana Cloud Free is $0 for 3 active users, 10k metric series and 14 days of retention, with no card. If you need SAML or fine grained RBAC, those are Grafana Enterprise features no host can switch on.
admin/admin. If your password cannot be delivered, the deploy stops instead of starting without it.Grafana's template deploys in about five minutes. That is the platform's own budget, not an estimate.
None of these a dealbreaker? The template deploys in about five minutes.
Launch GrafanaOptional daily snapshots cover the whole server and go with it. Grafana's own API hands you every dashboard as JSON: the copy you hold survives anything.
| Method | What it covers | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Daily server backup (optional, +20%) | The whole server: Grafana, SQLite, plugins, renders; the last 7 kept | With the server; deleted with it |
| Dashboard export through the API | Every dashboard as JSON, paged through the list endpoint | Wherever you save it |
Tell us what you monitor and how many people read the dashboards. We will send the server size, the monthly cost and whether Grafana Cloud Free would serve you better. One reply, from a person.
Yes. Grafana OSS is free software under the AGPLv3 licence, with no user limit and no licence key. What costs money is the server it runs on, billed here by the hour against prepaid credits; the cost table above shows the common sizes and the pricing calculator covers the rest. Grafana Enterprise features are a separate paid licence. See pricing.
No. A single Grafana instance is one container: a Go binary with its SQLite database on a volume. That is what this template runs, on a 4 GB server behind HTTPS. Kubernetes and a dedicated team only come into it for high availability at large scale. Even then the data sources are the hard part.
Grafana Enterprise adds features behind a commercial licence key: SAML single sign on, fine grained role based access control, scheduled reports and PDF export, query caching, usage insights, auditing and the premium data source plugins. This template runs Grafana OSS, which includes OAuth sign in through Google, GitHub, GitLab or generic OAuth.
Not until you configure SMTP. The template ships without mail credentials, so alert notifications by email are silent until you add a provider in Grafana's own configuration. Alerting itself works: rules evaluate and fire. Contact points such as Slack or a webhook need no SMTP at all.
Yes, the dashboards. Export each one as JSON through Grafana's HTTP API or the dashboard's export option, deploy the template here, reconnect your data sources by hand and import the files. Historical metrics and logs stored in Grafana Cloud do not move with them, so plan where that data will live first.
Selfhost.dev is a managed self hosting platform for developers and small teams. Open source apps and databases on dedicated servers you control, billed by the hour, in six locations across three continents.
Best for: Grafana, Metabase, Elasticsearch with Kibana and managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, ClickHouse, OpenSearch and Kafka.