What Plus adds

Plus is built from the free panel's source. Every feature of the free panel is in Plus, and every free option keeps the same name and the same path in the panel's options and in the saved map, but one: the CARTO API key, which would save a key in the dashboard, is not offered in Plus (see CARTO without a key). Everything else on the free site, from What it is to the option reference, stays true of a Plus panel. These pages cover only what Plus adds.

The free panel and Plus side by side

Feature	Free panel	Plus
kepler.gl layers, filters, time playback, saved map configuration	✓	✓
Column autodetection, GeoJSON, WKT and WKB geometry, H3	✓	✓
Trips, origin–destination flows, symbols, streamlines, vector fields	✓	✓
Cloud-native imagery: COG, PMTiles, Zarr, WMS, ArcGIS Image Service, STAC	✓	✓
Dashboard time sync, cross-filtering, draggable markers, Grafana Assistant context	✓	✓
OpenFreeMap, CARTO and Esri public base maps, with relief	✓	✓
Gauge, 3D Shape, Coverage, Surface, Sparkline, Traffic, Pipeline and Fleet layers		✓
Places without coordinates: regions, zones, airports, PoPs, geohashes, countries, IPs		✓
States, provinces, counties and cantons placed by name or ISO 3166-2 code		✓
Network links between named sites, coloured by Grafana thresholds		✓
Active alerts on the map, with only the rules the viewer can read		✓
Azure Maps and Google base maps, with keys no browser sees, Relief on Azure Maps, sky		✓
Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles layers		✓
Clicks and drawn polygons that also select and filter the Plus layers, and reach the other panels		✓
Sparkline and Fleet cards that follow Grafana's shared crosshair from the other panels		✓
A layer tour dashboard and Grafana Assistant skills for the Plus map		✓
A second panel, Time Brush: one time brush for the whole dashboard, pinned to the top while scrolling		✓

Same options, same saved map

Because the options are the same, a free panel can be switched to Plus without losing anything: its options and its saved map carry over, all but a CARTO API key. See Move a dashboard to Plus.

Plus adds its own settings next to the free ones:

• in the panel options, the Places and Active alerts groups, and the Thresholds, Unit and Decimals standard options, which colour and label network links;
• in kepler's side panel, the eight Plus layer types in the layer type list, the Plus base maps in the base map picker, and a 3D (Plus) tab in Add Data.

Plus steps aside wherever the free panel already draws a query. A query with coordinates, a geometry or an H3 index is drawn exactly as the free panel draws it; Places only acts on queries that name places without giving their position.

Which free version

Each Plus release is built on a released version of the free panel. Versions lists which one, and the Grafana versions each release supports.