Grafana Startup Program: $100,000 in Cloud Credits
Twelve months of credits, or until your next round closes, whichever comes first.
$100,000 in credits, then a guaranteed 20% off list
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$100,000 is about 1.28 million active metric series a month for a year, or roughly 180 TB of logs. Grafana Cloud already gives everyone 10,000 series and 50 GB a month for nothing, so the credits start earning their keep the moment you outgrow that.
Deal at a glance
| Programme | Grafana Labs Startup Program. The credits are spendable on any Grafana Cloud service rather than one fixed bundle |
|---|---|
| Credit amount | $100,000. Grafana’s announcement says up to $100,000 and its list of benefits states $100,000, with admission decided at Grafana’s sole discretion |
| Two clocks | 12 months, or your next round of funding, whichever comes first |
| What it covers | Managed logs, traces & metrics, plus performance testing, profiling, incident response & management, frontend and application observability, and synthetic monitoring |
| Also included | All Enterprise data source plugins & 24×7 Grafana support, plus access to the integrations team if you need a plugin built |
| After the credits | A guaranteed 20% discount off list prices, with deeper discounts based on consumption |
| Who qualifies | New Grafana Cloud customers, including teams already on the free tier, and teams running Grafana OSS who want the managed stack |
| Guidelines, not rules | Grafana suggests under $10M raised & under 25 employees, then says to apply even if you do not meet them |
| What you agree to | Being a reference customer, and possibly mutual marketing such as guest blogs or speaking at events |
| Application | Grafana’s own form. The 2024 announcement promises four questions in under two minutes; the live form now says five questions & about five minutes |
| Access | Free with any InnMind account |
| Last verified | July 2026 |
What you get
Observability is the bill that arrives after you succeed. This programme is aimed squarely at that moment.
- $100,000 across the whole platform. One balance, spendable on managed logs, traces and metrics, k6 performance testing, continuous profiling, incident response, frontend observability & synthetic monitoring. You are not locked into one product line.
- Every Enterprise data source plugin, which normally sits behind the paid Enterprise tier. If your data lives in Splunk, Snowflake, Datadog, Oracle or ServiceNow, those connectors are included.
- 24×7 support for the duration, which is the part most startups have never had and only appreciate at 3am.
- A guaranteed 20% off list prices when the credits end, with further discounts as consumption grows. This is the piece that outlives the programme, and it is the reason to treat the application as a pricing negotiation rather than a giveaway.
- Time with the integrations team to design a plugin or an integration if your product needs to talk to Grafana Cloud properly.
What founders use it for
Four jobs where credits buy more than the cash equivalent, because they remove a cost that grows exactly when you cannot afford it to.
Getting off self-hosted Prometheus and Loki. Running your own observability stack is a hidden engineer-month every quarter. Credits pay for the managed version while you redeploy that person onto the product.
Surviving a launch. Metric cardinality explodes when traffic does, and metrics are billed per active series. This is the single most likely line to surprise you, and the credits absorb the spike.
Proving reliability to an enterprise buyer. Synthetic monitoring plus 24×7 support plus an incident process is most of what a security questionnaire asks about uptime.
Load testing before a big contract. k6 virtual user hours are inside the same balance, so a capacity test that would need its own budget line comes out of the credit instead.
The two clocks, and the one nobody mentions
Every credit programme has an expiry. This one has two, and the second is unusual enough that it should change when you apply.
| Clock one: 12 months | Standard, and stated in Grafana’s list of benefits: $100,000 in credits usable across Grafana Cloud services for 12 months. |
|---|---|
| Clock two: your next round | Grafana’s announcement says the credits are offered for 12 months or until their next round of funding, whichever comes first. Close a Series A in month five and the remaining balance goes with it. |
| Why it is worth checking | The funding trigger appears in the announcement sentence and is not repeated in the benefits list, which describes the 20% discount as starting after you deplete the credits or your 12 months are completed. Two Grafana sentences, one condition between them. Ask for the trigger in writing before you plan a year of spend around it. |
| What it means for timing | If a round is close, applying after it closes buys you a clean twelve months instead of a partial one. If a round is a year away, apply now and use the runway. |
| The consolation | Whichever clock stops first, the guaranteed 20% off list prices starts then. The credits are the sprint; the discount is what you keep. |
What $100,000 of Grafana Cloud actually buys
Grafana publishes its list prices and it publishes the credit figure, and it never puts the two together. Spread evenly, $100,000 is about $8,333 a month for a year. At list prices, that month buys any one of these.
| Metrics | From $6.50 per 1,000 active series, so about 1.28 million active series every month for the full year |
|---|---|
| Logs & traces | $0.400 per GB to write, $0.050 to process and $0.100 to retain, so $0.550 per GB all in. That is roughly 180 TB of logs across the year, or 250 TB if you only count the write line |
| Load testing | $0.150 per k6 virtual user hour, so about 666,000 virtual user hours |
| Synthetic monitoring | $50.00 per 10,000 browser test executions, so about 20 million browser checks. API checks are $5.00 per 10,000, which is ten times cheaper again |
| The platform fee is noise | Grafana Cloud Pro carries a $19 monthly platform fee, which is $228 across the year, or about 0.2% of the credit. The usage is the whole bill |
| Source of the maths | Ours, from Grafana’s published Cloud price list in July 2026. Metrics pricing starts at that rate rather than sitting at it, so treat these as ceilings on volume and model your own mix |
What you agree to, and what the free tier already gives you
Two things worth reading before you apply. One is a commitment, and the other is the reason some teams do not need the programme yet.
| You agree to be a reference customer | Grafana does not present this as optional. Its wording is that it asks participants to agree to be a reference customer, and that it may also ask them to mutually agree to marketing activities such as guest blogs and speaking at events. If your product is confidential or your investors are, raise it before you accept. |
|---|---|
| Admission is discretionary | Grafana decides who is admitted at its sole discretion. The funding and headcount numbers are guidelines it invites you to ignore, which cuts both ways: meeting them is not a guarantee. |
| The free tier is genuinely useful | Grafana Cloud gives every account 10,000 active metric series, 50 GB of logs, traces and profiles, 500 k6 virtual user hours, 100,000 API and 10,000 browser synthetic checks, and three users, every month. A small team can run real observability on that indefinitely. |
| So who should apply now | Teams that have outgrown those limits, or can see the month they will. If you are comfortably inside the free tier, the credits will expire before you use much of them, and the 20% discount is worth more to you later than the credits are today. |
Who is eligible
| New customers | All new Grafana Cloud customers can apply, including teams already using a Grafana Cloud Free account. |
|---|---|
| Grafana OSS users | Teams already running Grafana open source who want to move to the fully managed stack are explicitly eligible. |
| Funding | Ideally under $10 million raised. Grafana states this as a guideline and asks you to apply even if you are over it. |
| Team size | Ideally under 25 employees, on the same guideline basis. |
| Decision | Grafana Labs determines which applicants are offered admission at its sole discretion. No published decision window. |
| Commitment | Agreeing to be a reference customer, and possibly to mutual marketing activities. |
| InnMind plan | Free with any InnMind account. No paid membership needed for this one. |
How to claim it
- Create a free InnMind account, or sign in if you already have one.
- Decide the timing first. If a funding round is weeks away, the twelve months you get by applying afterwards is worth more than starting now and losing the balance when the round closes.
- Create a Grafana Cloud account if you do not have one. The free tier needs no card, and being on it does not disqualify you.
- Open this deal in the InnMind app and click Access Perk to reach the Grafana Labs application.
- Fill in the form. Expect five questions and about five minutes, and have your funding stage, headcount & a sentence on what you want to monitor ready.
- Say what you will actually send. Metrics volume, log volume, whether you are migrating off self-hosted Prometheus or Loki. A concrete workload is the case for a real allocation.
- If you are admitted, get the two clocks confirmed in writing, and set a billing alert on day one so the move to paid usage is a decision rather than an invoice.
- Before the credits end, ask for the guaranteed 20% off list prices to be applied to your account, and ask what the consumption tiers below that look like.
Terms worth knowing
This deal is the Grafana Labs Startup Program, run by Grafana Labs and announced at ObservabilityCON on 25 September 2024. Grafana publishes no dedicated programme page, so every figure and condition here comes from that announcement and from the public Grafana Cloud price list, both read in July 2026, plus the live application form. From those sources: up to $100,000 in Grafana Cloud credits for eligible startups for 12 months or until their next round of funding, whichever comes first; $100,000 in credits usable on any Grafana Cloud service, covering managed logs, traces and metrics, performance testing, profiling, incident response and management, frontend and application observability and synthetic monitoring; all Enterprise data source plugins and 24×7 Grafana support; a guaranteed 20% discount from list prices after the credits are depleted or the 12 months are completed, with further discounts available based on consumption; and access to the integrations team to design a plugin or integration. Eligibility covers all new Grafana Cloud customers including those on free accounts, and existing Grafana OSS users moving to the managed product. Grafana Labs determines admission at its sole discretion. Participants are asked to agree to be a reference customer and may be asked to mutually agree to marketing activities such as guest blogs and speaking at events. The funding and headcount figures, under $10 million raised and under 25 employees, are stated as guidelines that applicants are invited to apply outside of. The announcement describes a four-question application taking under two minutes, while the live form states five questions and about five minutes. Prices quoted on this page are Grafana Cloud list prices from July 2026, and metrics pricing is published as starting at $6.50 per 1,000 active series rather than fixed at it. Volume figures are our own arithmetic from those list prices and are illustrative rather than a quote. Programme terms are Grafana’s and can change. Claiming needs a free InnMind account. Deal details verified July 2026.
Questions founders ask
How much does the Grafana startup program give you?
$100,000 in Grafana Cloud credits, spendable on any Grafana Cloud service, for 12 months or until your next round of funding, whichever comes first. Grafana Labs decides who is admitted at its sole discretion.
Is there a Grafana promo code or discount code?
There is no code. You apply through the Grafana Labs form and the credits are applied to your Grafana Cloud account if you are admitted. The discount that lasts is the guaranteed 20% off list prices, which starts when the credits end.
What happens if we raise a funding round during the 12 months?
Grafana states the credits run for 12 months or until your next round of funding, whichever comes first, so a round closing in month five ends the programme early. That trigger appears in the announcement and is not repeated in the list of benefits, so confirm it in writing before planning a full year of spend.
What does $100,000 of Grafana Cloud actually buy?
At list prices it is roughly 1.28 million active metric series every month for a year at $6.50 per thousand, or about 180 TB of logs at $0.550 per GB once the process, write and retain lines are counted, or about 666,000 k6 virtual user hours at $0.150 each. That arithmetic is ours.
Do we have to pay for Grafana Cloud if we are not admitted?
No. Grafana Cloud has a permanent free tier with 10,000 active metric series, 50 GB of logs, traces and profiles, 500 k6 virtual user hours, 100,000 API and 10,000 browser synthetic checks and three users every month. The Pro plan adds a $19 monthly platform fee plus usage above those allowances.
Who is eligible for the Grafana startup program?
All new Grafana Cloud customers, including teams on the free tier, and teams already running Grafana OSS who want the managed stack. Grafana suggests under $10 million raised and under 25 employees, and asks you to apply even if you are over those numbers.
What does a startup agree to in return?
Grafana asks admitted startups to agree to be a reference customer, and says it may also ask them to mutually agree to marketing activities such as guest blogs and speaking at events.
Do I need a paid InnMind plan to claim it?
No. Grafana is free with any InnMind account, and a free account also opens the rest of the startup deals catalogue.