# Grafana MCP Server vs Honeycomb MCP

> Grafana MCP Server scores 74.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Honeycomb MCP's 58.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Honeycomb MCP leads on security & auth. Both do observability metrics. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grafana-mcp-server-vs-honeycomb-mcp
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grafana-mcp-server-vs-honeycomb-mcp.md (~2,150 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grafana-mcp-server-vs-honeycomb-mcp.min.md (~830 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grafana-mcp-server-vs-honeycomb-mcp.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

Grafana MCP Server scores 74.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Honeycomb MCP's 58.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Honeycomb MCP leads on security & auth. Both do observability metrics.

- Grafana MCP Server: grade BB, 74.5/100, rank #69 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/grafana-mcp-server.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/grafana-mcp-server.json
- Honeycomb MCP: grade C, 58.3/100, rank #527 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/honeycomb-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/honeycomb-mcp.json

## Which one, for what

### Grafana MCP Server (BB)

Good for: Teams on Grafana, self-managed or Cloud, that want an agent to read dashboards and query Prometheus, Loki, Tempo and Pyroscope, and to work with alert rules, incidents and OnCall.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 91 against 65
- Schema & documentation, 81 against 57
- Agent ergonomics, 74 against 53
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 95 against 61
- Transparency & trust, 79 against 68

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: The default set is 79 tools and about 107 KB of definitions, and 119 tools with every category on

### Honeycomb MCP (C)

Good for: Agents that investigate latency and error spikes in a team already sending traces and events to Honeycomb, and that record findings as Boards, Triggers or SLOs.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 71 against 65

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- No incidents deducted, where Grafana MCP Server loses 3 points for them

Watch for: Tool input schemas and annotations are visible only through `tools/list` after sign-in. The public reference gives descriptions, not parameters


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Grafana MCP Server | Honeycomb MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 91 | 65 | Grafana MCP Server +26 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 81 | 57 | Grafana MCP Server +24 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 53 | Grafana MCP Server +21 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 65 | 71 | Honeycomb MCP +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 30 | Grafana MCP Server +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 95 | 61 | Grafana MCP Server +34 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 79 | 68 | Grafana MCP Server +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **74.5 · BB** | **58.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Grafana MCP Server | Honeycomb MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | MCP server |
| Vendor | Grafana Labs | Honeycomb |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp` |
| Transports | stdio, SSE (legacy), Streamable HTTP | Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Your plan |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary hosted service under Honeycomb's Terms of Service and Honeycomb Intelligence Supplemental Terms. The companion plugin in honeycombio/agent-skill is MIT |
| Tools exposed | 119 | 34 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.grafana/mcp-grafana` | `io.honeycomb/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-09-29 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2025-05-22 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-07-10 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 3.5k stars, 152k PyPI/wk | 27 stars |

## Verdicts

**Grafana MCP Server.** Every tool carries typed inputs and read-only, destructive and idempotent annotations, and `--disable-write` cuts the default 79 tools to 62. Writes and a general `grafana_api_request` tool are on by default, the default tool list is about 107 KB, and usage statistics have been sent to Grafana Labs by default since 2.0.0.

**Honeycomb MCP.** OAuth with `mcp:read` and `mcp:write` scopes keeps the 34 tools read-only until write access is granted, and per-tool rate limits are published. Tool input schemas are visible only after sign-in, and no injection guidance was found for telemetry content. The product changelogs disallow unnamed crawlers, so release history went unread.

## Before you call either

### Grafana MCP Server

1. Start with `--disable-write` unless the task needs writes, and add `--disable-api` to remove `grafana_api_request`
2. Pass `--enabled-tools` with only the categories needed. The default list loads 79 tools
3. Use `get_dashboard_summary` or `get_dashboard_property` with a JSONPath before `get_dashboard_by_uid`, which returns the whole dashboard JSON
4. Set `GRAFANA_USAGE_STATS=disabled` or `DO_NOT_TRACK=1` to stop the four-hourly usage report to stats.grafana.org
5. Use streamable HTTP, not SSE, when each caller needs its own token or organisation, and set `--server-auth-token` on any non-loopback address

### Honeycomb MCP

1. Use https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp for US teams and https://mcp.eu1.honeycomb.io/mcp for EU teams. A team's data lives in one region only
2. If no tools appear after sign-in, ask a Team Owner to enable Honeycomb Intelligence in team settings
3. Send `X-MCP-Toolset: query` or `canvas` to load a subset of the 34 tools. An empty or unknown value makes every request fail
4. Call `get_workspace_context` first, then `find_columns`, before `run_query`. Pass absolute time ranges as epoch timestamps
5. For unattended runs send `Authorization: Bearer <KEY_ID>:<SECRET_KEY>` from a Management key with only Model Context Protocol and Environments scopes

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Grafana MCP Server or Honeycomb MCP?

Grafana MCP Server scores 74.5 (BB) on agent readiness against Honeycomb MCP's 58.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Honeycomb MCP leads on security & auth.

### Do Grafana MCP Server and Honeycomb MCP need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Grafana MCP Server and Honeycomb MCP without installing anything?

Grafana MCP Server runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Honeycomb MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp.

### Are Grafana MCP Server and Honeycomb MCP open source?

Grafana MCP Server is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Honeycomb MCP.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grafana-mcp-server-vs-honeycomb-mcp.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grafana-mcp-server-vs-honeycomb-mcp.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "grafana-mcp-server", "b": "honeycomb-mcp"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare grafana-mcp-server honeycomb-mcp`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/grafana-mcp-server.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/honeycomb-mcp.json

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