Compare software

Metricbeat vs Grafana Alloy: catalog facts
Metricbeat	Grafana Alloy
Free Free to download; Elastic Cloud hosting is a paid option.	Free Free and open source from Grafana Labs.
Windows, Linux, Command line	Self-hosted
Ready-made modules for common services like Apache, Redis and NGINX Packages for apt, yum, Docker and Kubernetes	One collector for logs and other telemetry Replacement for the retired Promtail
Most useful alongside Elasticsearch and Kibana Default build is under the source-available Elastic License	Only a collector; needs Loki, Grafana or another backend to be useful Configuration takes time to learn
Downloadable app	Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License: Apache-2.0 (OSS build); Elastic License (default build)	License not stated
No account needed	No account needed
Not stated if it works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.