EasyBoard vs Grafana
Your 4 numbers don't need an observability platform.
Grafana is the industry standard for full-stack observability — metrics, logs, traces, alerting, 100+ plugins. If you need all of that, use Grafana. If you need a live number on a shareable screen in 5 minutes, you're reading the right page.
Pricing data last verified: June 2026 · Grafana Cloud pricing · EasyBoard pricing
Note: Grafana OSS is free and self-hosted. This comparison focuses on Grafana Cloud.
Grafana is a full observability stack for engineering teams monitoring infrastructure, applications, and distributed systems. EasyBoard is a live display board — push any number from any device, watch it update on a shareable URL. They are different tools solving different problems, and it's worth being precise about which problem you actually have.
The quick verdict
Choose EasyBoard if…
- →You want live data on a screen, not an observability stack
- →You're an individual, maker, or small team — not an SRE org
- →Setup taking less than 5 minutes matters more than power
- →Your device pushes over HTTP and you want it displayed immediately
- →The people watching the screen shouldn't need accounts
Choose Grafana if…
- →You need full observability: metrics, logs, traces, alerting
- →Your team runs infrastructure, Kubernetes, or distributed systems
- →You need PromQL, Loki, Tempo, or OpenTelemetry
- →You want 100+ data source plugins
- →You need self-hosted OSS (Grafana is free and extremely powerful)
- →You need SOC2/FedRAMP/GDPR compliance and enterprise SLAs
The setup gap is real
Grafana is not hard because it is poorly designed. It is complex because the problem it solves is genuinely complex — connecting and visualizing data across distributed systems requires configuration. That complexity is a feature for the SRE managing 40 microservices. It is a barrier for the developer who wants to display 3 sensor readings on a TV.
The median time from zero to a working Grafana dashboard with real data: hours. You need to configure a data source, understand the query language (PromQL for metrics, LogQL for logs), design panels, and manage dashboards — all before a single number appears. For ESP32 data, you'd need a Pushgateway or a metrics agent sitting between your device and Grafana, adding another moving part to maintain.
EasyBoard: one PATCH request from your firmware, and the number appears live on a URL you can share immediately. There is no query language, no data source to configure, no agent to run. The dashboard exists the moment you create an account.
This is not a knock on Grafana's power. It's an honest answer to: "How much setup should displaying a temperature reading require?"
Grafana Cloud pricing: why bills come in higher than expected
Grafana Cloud has a free tier with 10,000 active metric series and 50 GB of logs. That sounds generous — and it is, for individual monitoring. For active teams, real bills frequently land 2–5× above initial estimates, driven by metric cardinality growth and unexpected log volume.
EasyBoard's pricing is a single number: $0 free, $9/month Pro. No cardinality, no log gigabytes, no usage monitoring. You pay for what you build, not what you observe.
Public dashboards in Grafana Cloud
Grafana Cloud supports public dashboards, but they have historically been restricted, marked as experimental, or subject to authentication requirements depending on plan. Sharing a Grafana dashboard publicly — so that someone without a Grafana account can see live data — is possible but not the default. EasyBoard dashboards are public by design. The URL is the entire sharing interface. No account, no login, no configuration required.
Side-by-side comparison
| Feature | EasyBoard | Grafana Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first live dashboard | < 5 minutes | Hours (data source + query setup) |
| Query language required | None | PromQL / LogQL / TraceQL |
| Price (starting) | Free | Free (limited) |
| Price (active teams) | $9/month flat | $19/month + usage; bills often $100–500/month |
| Self-hosted / open source | ✗ | ✓ (Grafana OSS, free) |
| Historical data / charts | ✗ | ✓ (core feature) |
| Metrics, logs, traces | ✗ | ✓ (core feature) |
| Alerting | ✗ | ✓ powerful |
| 100+ data source plugins | ✗ | ✓ |
| Real-time push (SSE) | ✓ instant | ✗ polling (5–60s refresh) |
| Public shareable URL | ✓ no account | Limited (historically gated) |
| ESP32 / microcontroller | ✓ one HTTP call | Complex (Pushgateway + agent) |
| Flat predictable pricing | ✓ | ✗ usage-based |
Rows where Grafana wins are included. This page is written for someone doing a genuine evaluation — not someone who's already decided.
Coming from Grafana — or not quite sure you need it
If you're using Grafana for full observability (metrics, logs, traces, alerting) — keep using it. EasyBoard doesn't do any of that, and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise.
If you set up Grafana to display a handful of custom metrics or sensor readings and have been fighting the configuration ever since, EasyBoard might replace that specific use case at a fraction of the effort:
- 1
Create your free dashboard
Takes under 3 minutes. Enter your email, get a write token, push your first value.
- 2
Push your data directly
The same PATCH request works from any device or script. If it can make an HTTP request, it works — no Pushgateway, no agent.
- 3
Share the URL
No viewer accounts needed. Anyone with the link sees live data. Works in a browser, on a TV, or embedded in a webpage.
What you give up: historical data, PromQL queries, alerting, and 100+ plugins. What you gain: a live URL that's set up in minutes and shared without authentication friction.
If you need both — observability AND a shareable live display — many teams run Grafana for the former and EasyBoard for the latter. They don't overlap.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Grafana free?
- Grafana OSS (open-source, self-hosted) is free. Grafana Cloud has a free tier, but active usage — especially for teams — frequently exceeds it, leading to usage-based charges. EasyBoard is free up to 1 dashboard and 5 tiles, with no usage-based billing on any plan.
- Do I need to know PromQL to use EasyBoard?
- No query language at all. You push data with an HTTP PATCH request. EasyBoard stores the value you send and displays it. There is no query, no aggregation, no labels to define.
- Can EasyBoard replace Grafana for infrastructure monitoring?
- No. EasyBoard shows current values — it has no metrics history, no logs, no traces, and no alerting. For infrastructure monitoring where those things matter, Grafana (or Datadog, or similar) is the right tool.
- Can an ESP32 push data to Grafana?
- Yes, but it requires an intermediary — typically a Prometheus Pushgateway or a Telegraf agent. EasyBoard accepts a direct HTTP PATCH from any device, with no agent required.
- Is Grafana open source?
- Grafana OSS is open source and free to self-host. Grafana Cloud is a SaaS product with a usage-based pricing model. EasyBoard is a closed-source SaaS; there is no self-hosted option.
- Which is better for a TV dashboard in an office?
- It depends on where your data comes from. If your data lives in infrastructure metrics (Prometheus, CloudWatch, etc.), use Grafana. If your data is pushed from scripts, IoT devices, or automations, EasyBoard — and the sharing model (no viewer accounts) is a material advantage when the audience is non-technical team members.
See if EasyBoard is the right fit.
Create a free dashboard and push your first number. The whole setup takes less time than reading this page. If you need observability — history, alerting, PromQL — Grafana is the right tool and we mean it.
Create my dashboard →Free forever. No query language. No setup beyond email.
Competitor pricing data last verified June 2026. See Grafana's current pricing →