Checkmk vs Grafana: Monitoring Compared

Checkmk started as a Nagios plugin in 2008 and has evolved into a standalone infrastructure monitoring platform that discovers hosts, checks services, and sends alerts — all from one package. Grafana is a visualization layer that turns time-series data from sources like Prometheus , InfluxDB, or Loki into dashboards and alerts. They solve different problems, and understanding the distinction matters before you deploy either. Quick Overview Aspect Checkmk Raw Grafana OSS Purpose Infrastructure monitoring (all-in-one) Data visualization & dashboarding Latest version 2.3.0p44 v12.4.1 Docker image checkmk/check-mk-raw:2.3.0p44 grafana/grafana-oss:12.4.1 License GPL-2.0 (Raw Edition) AGPL-3.0 Built-in data collection Yes — agent-based + SNMP + agentless No — requires external data sources Service auto-discovery Yes No Built-in alerting Yes (rules + notifications) Yes (alert rules + contact points) Built-in dashboards Yes (pre-built per service) Yes (community dashboards + custom) Host/servi