Grafana vs LogRocket for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Grafana Overview

Grafana is the go-to platform for building monitoring dashboards. It connects to data sources like Prometheus for metrics, Loki for logs, and Tempo for distributed traces. You build panels that visualize your server health, application performance, database query times, and anything else you can measure. The flexibility is unmatched: if you can put a number on it, Grafana can graph it.

The tradeoff for solo developers is setup time. Grafana does not collect data on its own. You need to configure Prometheus exporters for your services, set up Loki agents for log collection, and then build dashboards that actually show you useful information. This is not a weekend project. It took me several iterations before my Grafana dashboards told me what I actually needed to know instead of just looking impressive.

Grafana Cloud's free tier helps by handling the backend infrastructure. You get hosted Prometheus, Loki, and Tempo with reasonable limits (10,000 metric series, 50 GB logs per month). For solo developers who want Grafana without managing the stack behind it, this is a solid option. But you still need to instrument your applications and build your dashboards.

LogRocket Overview

LogRocket records what happens in your users' browsers. Session replay captures every click, scroll, network request, console log, and state change. When something goes wrong on the frontend, you do not guess. You watch the recording and see exactly what the user experienced.

The setup is quick. Install the SDK, initialize it with your project key, and sessions start recording automatically. Within minutes of your first deployment, you can watch real users interacting with your application. LogRocket groups frontend errors and links them to the sessions where they occurred, so you can jump straight from an error report to a video of what happened.

For solo developers, LogRocket's biggest value is eliminating the "works on my machine" problem. I have had users report bugs that I could not reproduce no matter what I tried. Pulling up their LogRocket session showed me the exact sequence of actions, the browser they were using, and the network conditions that triggered the issue. That saves hours of debugging.

The free tier gives you 1,000 sessions per month. For an early-stage product, that is usually enough. The jump to $99 per month for the Team plan is significant for a solo developer, so keep that in mind as your traffic grows.

When to Pick Grafana

Grafana is the right choice when you need visibility into your infrastructure and backend systems.

Pick Grafana if:

• You manage your own servers, containers, or Kubernetes clusters
• You need custom dashboards for infrastructure metrics (CPU, memory, network, disk)
• You want to monitor backend application performance (response times, queue depth, error rates)
• You are already using Prometheus or other time-series databases
• You need alerting based on metric thresholds
• Long-term metric storage and trend analysis matter to you

Grafana shines when the question is "how is my infrastructure performing?" and you need granular, real-time answers.

When to Pick LogRocket

LogRocket is the right choice when your problems are on the frontend and involve understanding user experience.

Pick LogRocket if:

• You are building a web application with significant frontend complexity
• Users report bugs you cannot reproduce
• You want to understand how real users navigate your product
• Frontend performance (slow renders, janky scrolling) needs attention
• You debug Redux, Vuex, or other state management issues frequently
• You need visual proof of bugs for your development workflow

LogRocket shines when the question is "what did the user actually experience?" and you need to see it with your own eyes.

The Verdict

Grafana and LogRocket monitor completely different things. Grafana watches your servers and backend. LogRocket watches your users and frontend. Comparing them is a bit unfair because they rarely compete for the same use case.

If you are a solo developer and have to choose one, the decision depends on where your pain is. Running your own infrastructure with containers, background workers, and databases? Grafana (or Grafana Cloud) gives you the visibility to keep it all healthy. Building a frontend-heavy web app where user experience is everything? LogRocket helps you catch and fix issues you would never find on your own.

The pragmatic solo developer answer: most early-stage projects benefit more from LogRocket. Your infrastructure is probably simple enough that basic health checks and application logs cover your backend monitoring needs. But your frontend is where users interact with your product, and understanding their experience directly impacts whether they stick around. Start with LogRocket, add Grafana when your infrastructure grows complex enough to warrant it.