Staxly

Grafana Cloud vs Cal.com

Fully-managed observability — Prometheus + Loki + Tempo + Grafana
vs. Open-source scheduling infrastructure — the self-hostable Calendly alternative

Grafana Cloud websiteCal.com website

Pricing tiers

Grafana Cloud

Free
Always free. 10k metrics series + 50 GB logs/traces/profiles + 3 users + 14-day retention.
Free
Self-Hosted (OSS)
Apache 2.0 / AGPL. Run Grafana + Mimir + Loki + Tempo yourself.
$0 base (usage-based)
Pro
$19/mo platform fee + usage-based overages. 10k metrics series + 50 GB included. 13-month metrics retention.
$19/mo
Enterprise
$25,000/year minimum. Custom retention, premium support, BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) option.
$25000/mo
Grafana Cloud website

Cal.com

Free (Cloud)
$0. 1 user. Unlimited event types. Unlimited meetings. Cal branding.
Free
Self-Hosted (OSS)
Free forever. AGPL-3.0. Docker/K8s deploy. Full feature parity with cloud.
$0 base (usage-based)
Teams
$12/user/mo. Round-robin, collective events, routing forms, Cal Video, Workflows.
$12/mo
Organizations
$37/user/mo. SSO, advanced routing, dashboards, analytics, dedicated support.
$37/mo
Enterprise
Custom. SAML, HIPAA, dedicated deployments, security reviews.
Custom
Cal.com website

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing free on Grafana Cloud vs free on Cal.com.

MetricGrafana CloudCal.com
No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers.

Features

Grafana Cloud · 16 features

  • Alloy (OTel agent)Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector with Grafana additions.
  • Application PlatformInfrastructure + k8s + frontend + cloud provider integrations.
  • Beyla (eBPF auto-instrumentation)Zero-code auto-instrumentation via eBPF for any language.
  • Faro (RUM)Frontend observability — traces, logs, Core Web Vitals.
  • Grafana in Azure Marketplace"Azure Managed Grafana" — Azure-native deployment.
  • Grafana IncidentIncident management with Slack-native flows.
  • Grafana OnCallOn-call scheduling + incident response (powered by Amixr).
  • Grafana SLOService level objective tracking + error budget visualization.
  • Grafana (visualization)Dashboards, variables, alerting, annotations over any datasource.
  • k6 (synthetic + load testing)Load testing + synthetic monitoring. JavaScript-based scripts.
  • Loki (logs)Prometheus-inspired log aggregation with LogQL.
  • Mimir (metrics)Horizontally-scalable Prometheus-compatible TSDB.
  • Pyroscope (profiling)Continuous profiling (CPU, memory, etc.).
  • Self-Host OptionFull OSS stack deployable in your infra.
  • Tempo (traces)High-scale distributed tracing with TraceQL.
  • Unified AlertingGrafana-native alerting across metrics, logs, traces.

Cal.com · 16 features

  • AvailabilityMultiple schedules per user.
  • Buffer TimePadding between meetings.
  • Cal VideoBuilt-in video conferencing.
  • EmbedInline/popup/floating-button embeds.
  • Event TypesOne-on-one, group, collective, round-robin.
  • Insights DashboardBooking trends + team analytics.
  • Paid BookingsStripe integration for paid appointments.
  • Platform APIEmbed scheduling in your SaaS.
  • Recurring EventsWeekly/monthly recurring bookings.
  • Round-RobinDistribute bookings across team.
  • Routing FormsRoute leads by answers.
  • Self-HostDeploy to your infra.
  • SSOSAML + OIDC.
  • Timezone DetectionAuto-detect viewer timezone.
  • WebhooksOutbound events.
  • WorkflowsAutomated email/SMS reminders.

Developer interfaces

KindGrafana CloudCal.com
CLIGrafana Alloy (agent), grafana-clical CLI (self-host)
SDKFaro Web SDK (RUM)@calcom/embed-react
RESTGrafana HTTP API, Loki Push APICal.com REST API v2, Platform API (embed in SaaS)
OTHERPrometheus Remote Write, Tempo OTLPCal.com Dashboard, Cal.com Webhooks
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Grafana Cloud and Cal.com may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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