Everything on this page is about usage data specifically, and is checkable against Grafana's own documentation. We use no logos or marks, and nothing here is presented as an endorsement.
Compare · Dashboards and visualisationPixel Data
Pixel Data
vs Grafana
Grafana visualises the data you give it, and does that very well. For usage data, that leaves you building the pipeline, the rating engine and the billing on top — and it still cannot tell you whether your supplier overcharged you.
With Grafana, you
- You build the data source, the usage schema and the pipeline before a single panel shows anything.
- You write the rating logic yourself — increments, minimums, longest-prefix matching — because a panel can plot seconds but cannot price them.
- You still have no statements, no audit trail, and nothing that checks a supplier invoice.
- You host it, upgrade it, secure it, and build your own portal if your customers ever need to see their usage.
With Pixel Data, you
- You get the dashboards already built for usage data, live within minutes of one install command.
- You get a rating engine that turns events into money, with the plan version recorded against every charge.
- You get statements, an immutable audit trail and supplier reconciliation as part of the same subscription.
- You get hosting, upgrades and access control included, and a white-label customer portal on the roadmap.
What it means for you
You stop paying an engineer to rebuild billing logic behind a dashboard, and you start seeing what every route actually earns.
Side by side
For usage data. Nothing else is claimed.
| For your usage data | Pixel Data | Grafana |
|---|---|---|
| Live charts of anything you can query | Yes | Yes |
| Custom visualisations of arbitrary data | No | Yes |
| Infrastructure and application monitoring | No | Yes |
| Large plug-in and community ecosystem | No | Yes |
| Dashboards pre-built for usage billing | Yes | No |
| Turns usage into moneyRates, plan versions, increments, minimums, currency — not a number on an axis. | Yes | No |
| Rating engine and versioned price plans | Yes | No |
| Monthly statements per account | Yes | No |
| Supplier invoice reconciliation | Yes | No |
| Drill down from an amount to its events, then to the arithmetic | Yes | Only if you build the data model for it |
| Alerts denominated in pounds | Yes | Metric thresholds |
| Hosting, upgrades and access controlSelf-hosting is a real operational cost that rarely appears in a comparison. | Included | Yours to run, or a separate cloud subscription |
| White-labelled portal for your own customers | On the roadmap | Yours to build |
| Data source, schema and pipeline | Included | You build it first |
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Pixel Data is not affiliated with or endorsed by any company mentioned.
However you get here, you get these three
The same on every comparison, because they are the same three things none of these tools does.
Be live before the kettle boils
You run one line on the machine that already has your usage on it. No schema workshop, no engineering sprint, no project plan.
Defend any figure on any invoice
You click any amount through to its events, and any event through to the arithmetic — increment, minimum, matched prefix, plan version.
Get back what your carrier over-charged
You upload a carrier invoice and get a line-by-line verdict against what your own events say actually happened.
When Grafana is the right choice
If you are watching infrastructure — CPU, latency, error rates, queue depth — Grafana is the right tool and we are not a monitoring product. Keep it, and point it wherever you like.
See your own usage on a dashboard today.
Install takes one command. If you would rather look first, the sandbox is open — sample data, no card, no signup.