
kibana
Open source analytics and visualization platform for Elasticsearch
The Lens
Kibana is the visualization layer for Elasticsearch. If your data lives in an Elastic cluster, this is how you build dashboards, run queries, and monitor everything from logs to APM traces. The UI handles everything from ad-hoc searches to complex aggregations without writing code.
Self-hosting is free under the Elastic License 2.0, but running Elasticsearch underneath is the real commitment. Plan for a dedicated cluster, index management, and ongoing maintenance. This is not a weekend project for small teams.
Solo developers and small teams doing log analysis can get by with the free tier and a managed Elastic Cloud instance (starts at $95/mo). Enterprise teams running their own clusters get the full power but need dedicated ops. The paid tiers add security features (SSO, field-level permissions), machine learning, and cross-cluster search.
The catch: Kibana without Elasticsearch is nothing, and Elasticsearch at scale is expensive to operate. If you just need dashboards over Postgres or CSV data, look at Metabase or Grafana instead.
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Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
open core## Free Tier Kibana is free under the Elastic License 2.0. Full dashboard, visualization, and query capabilities included. Dev Tools, Discover, and Canvas are all free.
## Self-Hosted Requires an Elasticsearch cluster underneath. Running Elasticsearch at production scale needs dedicated infrastructure, monitoring, and index lifecycle management. Operational burden is significant.
## Paid Elastic Cloud starts at $95/mo for a managed cluster. Enterprise features (SSO, RBAC, cross-cluster search, ML) require a paid subscription. On-prem platinum/enterprise licenses are quote-based.
Free self-hosted under Elastic License. Elastic Cloud starts at $95/mo. Enterprise features require a paid subscription.
License: Other
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Commercial use: ✗ Restricted
About
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- elastic (Organization)
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