Prometheus + Grafana vs SolarWinds: The Cloud-Native Approach Compared

By NetMon Hub Editorial · 7 July 2026

Unlike LibreNMS and Zabbix, which are drop-in network management systems, a Prometheus + Grafana stack is a different philosophy entirely: a general-purpose, cloud-native metrics platform you assemble into a network monitor. It is the choice of the streaming-telemetry faction — teams that want observability-style monitoring and have the engineering capability to build it. This is an honest comparison against the SolarWinds Platform.

The one-line answer

• Prometheus + Grafana is a free, open-source metrics stack: Prometheus scrapes and stores time-series data, PromQL queries it, Alertmanager routes alerts, and Grafana visualises. For networks you add snmp_exporter (SNMP devices) and/or gNMI streaming telemetry. Massive flexibility and a modern model — but you are building an NMS, not installing one.
• SolarWinds Platform (Orion/NPM) is a purpose-built, commercial network monitor: discovery, device templates, topology maps and NetFlow out of the box — at a licence cost that rose sharply after the 2025 buyout.

If you’re an engineering-led team already living in Prometheus for services and you want one model for everything, this stack is compelling. If you want a turnkey network tool with discovery, maps and support, it is the wrong shape.

Why this comparison keeps coming up

Two forces drive it — one is the SolarWinds situation, the other is a genuine industry shift:

• The push off SolarWinds. The 2020 SUNBURST breach hurt trust in Orion; then Turn/River Capital completed its $4.4 billion take-private on 16 April 2025, and SolarWinds moved to subscription-only licensing from 1 August 2025, with independent commentary reporting renewal hikes up to ~300%.
• The pull toward streaming telemetry. The industry direction for 2026 is a hybrid of SNMP polling and streaming telemetry (gNMI/OpenConfig) feeding an observability backend — exactly the model Prometheus + Grafana embodies. For teams modernising, this stack is a strategic bet, not just a cost move.

Side by side

How the stack does network monitoring

The current components (as of early 2026: Prometheus 3.x, snmp_exporter 0.28, Grafana 12):

• snmp_exporter sits between your devices and Prometheus, translating SNMP OIDs into labelled metrics. You define what to collect with the generator (which compiles MIBs into the exporter config) — powerful, but the MIB/generator workflow is the steepest part of the setup.
• Prometheus scrapes the exporter (and any other targets) on an interval and stores the time-series locally.
• gNMI streaming telemetry is the modern alternative to polling: the device pushes subscription-based updates (commonly 10–30s), which a collector exposes for Prometheus to scrape. This reduces polling overhead and gives fresher data on platforms that support it — the direction of travel for modern network gear.
• Alertmanager takes Prometheus alert rules and handles routing, deduplication, grouping and silences into Slack/PagerDuty/email.
• Grafana is the visualisation layer — and this is a genuine strength over the Orion console.

A mature deployment often runs hybrid: snmp_exporter for the legacy estate, gNMI where devices support it, all landing in one Prometheus/Grafana pane.

Feature parity, honestly

Where it’s stronger than SolarWinds: dashboards (Grafana), the query model (PromQL is expressive once learned), the unified model if you already monitor services/containers in Prometheus, and a forward-looking telemetry story. Streaming telemetry gives fresher, lower-overhead data than SNMP polling on supported hardware.

Where it’s weaker — and these are real:

• No device auto-discovery. You configure targets (or wire up service discovery). There’s no “point it at a subnet and go” like NPM.
• No topology map out of the box — you build views in Grafana; there’s no auto-drawn network map.
• Not a NetFlow tool. Prometheus is metrics, not flows. Deep top-talker/flow forensics needs a separate collector — it is not an NTA replacement.
• No config backup — pair Oxidized/RANCID, as with the other open-source options.
• Short local retention. Prometheus’ local TSDB is designed for recent data; long-term history means remote-write to Thanos, Mimir or Cortex — another component to run.
• Steepest learning curve of the alternatives: PromQL, exporter/MIB configuration, and the operational burden of assembling and running the whole stack.

Cost

The software is free. The cost is engineering: this is the most build-it-yourself option here, so the realistic spend is skilled staff time to design, deploy and operate the stack (plus optional commercial support from Grafana Labs or vendors). Against SolarWinds’ post-2025 subscription pricing the licence saving is large, but the operational investment is the highest of the alternatives — weigh total cost of ownership, not the £0 licence.

Migration effort

This is the heaviest migration of the alternatives, and rarely a like-for-like swap:

1. Inventory your SolarWinds modules (NPM / NCM / NTA / SAM). Prometheus + snmp_exporter covers the NPM metric-collection ground; NCM maps to Oxidized; NTA has no clean equivalent.
2. Build the collection layer: generate the snmp_exporter config from your device MIBs; enable gNMI where supported.
3. Stand up Prometheus (with remote-write for retention), Alertmanager and Grafana.
4. Rebuild alerts as Prometheus rules + Alertmanager routes, and build Grafana dashboards to replace Orion views.
5. Add a flow collector if you relied on NTA; add Oxidized for config backup.
6. Parallel-run until trusted, then decommission SolarWinds.

Realistically this suits teams that already run Prometheus — building it from zero just to replace a network monitor is usually the wrong call; LibreNMS or Zabbix get you there with far less effort.

Who should pick which

Choose Prometheus + Grafana if you’re an engineering-led team, already use Prometheus for services/infrastructure, want one observability model across everything, and value streaming telemetry and Grafana dashboards over turnkey NMS features. You must have the capability to build and operate the stack.

Choose LibreNMS or Zabbix instead if you want an actual network management system — discovery, SNMP depth, alerting — with far less assembly. See LibreNMS vs SolarWinds and Zabbix vs SolarWinds.

Stay on SolarWinds (or a commercial alternative) if you need auto-discovery, topology maps, native NetFlow and a support SLA without building any of it.

Bottom line

Prometheus + Grafana is the most modern and most flexible answer to leaving SolarWinds — and the most demanding. It rewards teams already invested in Prometheus with a unified, telemetry-ready observability model and superb dashboards. But it is a metrics stack you assemble into a network monitor: no auto-discovery, no topology map, no native NetFlow, short local retention, and the steepest learning curve of the alternatives. If those trade-offs fit your team, it’s a strong strategic bet; if you just want to replace a network monitor quickly, start with LibreNMS or Zabbix.

For the SolarWinds side — modules, SWQL and the release history — see our SolarWinds Platform overview and the release-notes review.