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Grafana is the default answer for observability dashboards, and its official ClickHouse data source (maintained by Grafana Labs) is good: SQL and visual query builders, time series, logs, traces, and Grafana alerting on top. If you already run Grafana for metrics and want ClickHouse panels next to Prometheus ones, that is a strong setup. CH-UI is not trying to be your metrics wall. It is the workspace for developing on and operating ClickHouse itself: SQL editor, pipelines, models, governance, replication and Keeper health, query-log analytics, and cost showback. Fittingly, CH-UI exposes a Prometheus /metrics endpoint you can scrape into Grafana.
| Grafana | CH-UI | |
|---|---|---|
| Product focus | General-purpose observability and dashboarding across dozens of data sources. | A dedicated ClickHouse workspace: development, ingestion, monitoring, governance, cost. |
| ClickHouse support | Official grafana-clickhouse-datasource plugin (Grafana Labs): SQL editor + visual builder, time series, tables, logs, traces; an Altinity community plugin also exists. | Native throughout: the entire product is built on the ClickHouse client and system tables. |
| Deployment | Self-host Grafana OSS/Enterprise or use Grafana Cloud; plugin installed per instance. | One self-hosted binary with SQLite state; Docker/Helm; direct connection or outbound tunnel. |
| Dashboards & alerting | Best-in-class: templating, provisioning/dashboards-as-code, unified alerting, on-call ecosystem. Grafana wins this row. | Dashboards with public links plus alert rules and channels (Pro), deliberately simpler. |
| SQL development | The plugin query editor is built for panels, not for iterative SQL work: no query history, schema workspace, or result exploration. | Full SQL workspace: streaming results, sort/filter, automatic history, jump-to-error, Ask AI (Pro). |
| ClickHouse operations | Whatever you build: you can hand-write system-table dashboards, and community boards exist, but nothing is ClickHouse-aware out of the box. | Cluster Health and Query Insights (Pro) prebuilt: per-node replication, merges, mutations, parts, Keeper, backups, query_log percentiles and patterns. |
| Cost visibility | Build-it-yourself from system tables. | Cost Center (Pro): priced compute and storage showback with team attribution and CSV export. |
| Ingestion & modeling | None. Grafana visualizes, it does not load or transform data. | Pipelines (Kafka, S3, webhooks, databases) and dbt-style models with schedules, plus GitHub sync (Pro). |
| Governance & audit | Team sync, data-source permissions, and reporting are Enterprise features; auditing targets Grafana itself. | Immutable audit of workspace actions and queries, governance catalog and guardrails, SSO/OIDC (Pro). |
| Licensing & price | OSS free (AGPLv3). Grafana Cloud: free tier (3 users, usage limits), Pro from $19/month plus usage; Enterprise from about $25,000/year. | Core free (Apache-2.0). Pro $1,199/year flat per instance, unlimited users, offline activation. |
Questions
Yes. The official ClickHouse data source plugin is maintained by Grafana Labs, supports SQL and visual query building, and renders time series, tables, logs, and traces, with Grafana alerting on top. For observability dashboards over ClickHouse data it is the established choice.
Not for general observability. If Grafana is your metrics wall for Prometheus, Loki, and friends, keep it. CH-UI even exposes a Prometheus /metrics endpoint you can scrape into it. CH-UI replaces the hand-built ClickHouse system-table dashboards and adds the workspace parts Grafana never had: SQL development, ingestion, modeling, governance.
Yes, and the split is natural: Grafana for fleet-wide infrastructure metrics and alert routing, CH-UI for ClickHouse-native depth (replication and Keeper state, merges and mutations, query_log analytics, and cost attribution) without writing the SQL for those panels yourself.
Grafana OSS is free (AGPLv3) and self-hosted Enterprise or Grafana Cloud scale with users and usage (Cloud Pro starts at $19/month plus usage; Enterprise around $25,000/year minimum). CH-UI core is free (Apache-2.0) and Pro is a flat $1,199/year per instance regardless of team size.
Self-host the Apache-2.0 core for free, or start a 30-day Pro trial: no card, no sales call, license delivered by email.
