What is the difference between Grafana and VictoriaMetrics?

VictoriaMetrics is a scalable distributed time series database (TSDB), optimized for high metric ingestion and long-term storage. It is an alternative to Prometheus.

Grafana is a platform for data analysis and visualization. It uses various data sources (including VictoriaMetrics and other TSDBs) to build dashboards, graphs, and alerts.

Main difference: VictoriaMetrics is a data storage, while Grafana is a visualization tool that can work with data from VictoriaMetrics.

# Example of using VictoriaMetrics as a data source for Grafana
# Grafana connects to VictoriaMetrics via API
# VictoriaMetrics stores data collected, for example, by a Prometheus agent

Characteristic	VictoriaMetrics	Grafana
Type	TSDB	Visualization platform
Purpose	Data storage	Data display
Functionality	Ingest, store, query data	Visualization, dashboards, alerts
Dependencies	Independent, can be a data source	Requires a data source