Comparison
Altara vs Grafana
React telemetry components vs observability dashboards
Grafana and Altara overlap less than they appear to. Grafana is a mature observability platform for metrics, logs, and traces from sources like Prometheus, InfluxDB, and Postgres, and it is excellent at that. Altara is a React component library for real-time hardware and robotics telemetry embedded directly in your own app. If you are monitoring infrastructure, Grafana is the right tool. If you are building a product UI that shows live sensor or robot data, that is where Altara fits.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Altara | Grafana |
|---|---|---|
| License | MIT | AGPLv3 for core (commercial license needed to embed in a distributed or SaaS product without AGPL obligations) |
| Delivery model | npm packages, React components | Standalone server application |
| Embeddable in your own React app | Yes. Yes, native components | No. Via iframe to a Grafana server, not native React components |
| Styling control | Yes. Full, it is your own components | No. Limited, constrained to Grafana theming and iframe |
| Built for | Real-time robotics and hardware telemetry | Metrics, logs, and traces from infrastructure data sources |
| ROS2 and MQTT | Yes. Yes, via adapters | No. Not natively, requires a data source bridge |
| High-frequency sensor streams | Yes. Yes, canvas rendered | Possible but not the primary design target |
| Domain instruments (flight, SCADA, LiDAR) | Yes. Yes | No. No |
| Data source ecosystem (Prometheus, Loki, etc.) | No. No | Yes. Yes, extensive, core strength |
| Alerting | No. No | Yes. Yes, mature, core strength |
| Best for | Embedding live telemetry in a custom app | Infrastructure and application observability |
When to use Altara
- You are building a product UI and need telemetry views as native React components
- You need an MIT license without AGPL obligations for a commercial product
- You work with robotics or hardware telemetry (ROS2, MQTT, serial, WebSocket)
- You need domain-specific instruments Grafana does not provide
When to use Grafana instead
- You are monitoring infrastructure, servers, or application metrics
- You already use Prometheus, Loki, InfluxDB, or similar data sources
- You need mature alerting and a large data-source ecosystem
- A separate dashboard server, embedded by iframe, meets your needs
They work together
Teams often run Grafana for infrastructure monitoring and use Altara for the real-time device-facing views inside their own product.