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/se