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title: Choosing Between ClickStack and Grafana for ClickHouse...
description: A comparison of ClickStack and Grafana (with the ClickHouse plugin) as observability interfaces on top of ClickHouse. ClickStack is built specifically for...
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# Choosing Between ClickStack and Grafana for ClickHouse Observability

**[ClickHouse](https://daily.dev/sources/clickhouse)** · 11 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

A comparison of ClickStack and Grafana (with the ClickHouse plugin) as observability interfaces on top of ClickHouse. ClickStack is built specifically for ClickHouse with an investigation-first philosophy, native correlation across logs, traces, metrics, and sessions, and an MCP server for building custom agentic SRE workflows. Grafana excels in heterogeneous environments where ClickHouse is one of many data sources, offering a unified dashboarding and alerting layer across multiple backends. Many teams use both: Grafana for cross-system dashboards and Prometheus-driven alerting, ClickStack as the deep investigative and agentic layer. The underlying data stays in ClickHouse regardless of which interface is chosen, making the decision low-risk and reversible.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://clickhouse.com/blog/choosing-between-clickstack-and-grafana-for-clickhouse-observability>

## Questions this post answers

### How complete is PromQL support in ClickHouse and ClickStack right now?

PromQL support in ClickHouse and ClickStack is experimental, covering roughly 65% of the PromQL test suite. Compatibility is expected to continue improving, which could eventually reduce the need to keep Grafana around solely for Prometheus-driven workloads, though it is not yet a full replacement for established PromQL-based alerting setups.

_Teams weighing Prometheus migration timelines can follow PromQL compatibility progress in ClickHouse on daily.dev._

### Should I use ClickStack or Grafana with ClickHouse for observability?

Choose ClickStack when ClickHouse is the primary observability store and engineers need a unified, search-first investigation experience across logs, traces, metrics, and sessions, especially for building custom agentic SRE workflows via its MCP server. Choose Grafana when ClickHouse is one of several data sources in a broader monitoring estate that relies on Prometheus alerting and cross-system dashboards. Many teams run both together.

_Teams deciding on an observability stack around ClickHouse can weigh these tradeoffs through daily.dev._

### Can I use both Grafana and ClickStack together with the same ClickHouse data?

Yes, both tools can operate over the same underlying ClickHouse data without needing separate ingestion pipelines or duplicate storage. A common setup keeps Grafana as the dashboarding and alerting layer while deploying ClickStack headlessly, connecting Grafana to the ClickStack MCP server so ClickStack serves as the agentic investigation layer for deeper ClickHouse telemetry analysis.

_Engineers combining dashboarding and deep investigation tools can track ClickHouse integration patterns on daily.dev._

## Similar posts on daily.dev

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- [ClickStack: A \(half\) year in review](https://daily.dev/posts/clickstack-a-half-year-in-review-vyjehpfbh) · ClickHouse · 2 upvotes · 0 comments
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---

Tags: [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability), [#monitoring](https://daily.dev/tags/monitoring), [#opentelemetry](https://daily.dev/tags/opentelemetry), [#grafana](https://daily.dev/tags/grafana), [#clickhouse](https://daily.dev/tags/clickhouse)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/choosing-between-clickstack-and-grafana-for-clickhouse-observability-ps3izar3q)

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