Grafana is free software based on the Apache 2.0 license,[2]​ that allows the visualization and formatting of metric data. It allows you to create dashboards and graphs from multiple sources, including time series databases such as Graphite&action=edit&redlink=1 "Graphite (software) (not yet written), InfluxDB"), and OpenTSDB").[3][4]​ It originally started as a Kibana component and was later forked "Fork (software development)").[5]

Grafana is cross-platform without any dependencies and can also be deployed with Docker "Docker (software)"). It is written in Go language "Go (programming language)") and has a complete HTTP API.[6]​[7]​.

In addition to managing classic dashboards (additions, deletions, favorites), Grafana offers to share a current dashboard by creating a link or a static snapshot of it.

All dashboards and data sources are linked to an organization, and application users are linked to organizations through roles.[6]​.

Grafana prevents users from accidentally overwriting a dashboard. Similar protection exists when creating a new control panel whose name already exists.[8]​.

The tool offers the possibility of configuring alerts.[9]​.