Plugins

Besides the wide range of visualizations and data sources that are available immediately after you install Grafana, you can extend your Grafana experience with plugins.

You can install one of the plugins built by the Grafana community, or build one yourself.

Grafana supports three types of plugins: panels, data sources, and apps.

Panel plugins

Add new visualizations to your dashboard with panel plugins, such as the .

Use panel plugins when you want to:

Visualize data returned by data source queries.
Navigate between dashboards.
Control external systems, such as smart home devices.

Data source plugins

Data source plugins add support for new databases, such as .

Data source plugins communicate with external sources of data and return the data in a format that Grafana understands. By adding a data source plugin, you can immediately use the data in any of your existing dashboards.

Use data source plugins when you want to import data from external systems.