Plan your Grafana Labs NSO exercise
Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPOGrafana Labs is pre-IPO. Plan your NSO exercise tax (federal, state, FICA) at any expected valuation.
Beta · invite-only · AlphaLatitude Inc. · Free Tools
Your grant
Seeded from secondary-market data, as of Jun 6, 2026
Tax inputs
Hold strategy
Best after-tax payout — at year 1
$49,509
Hold 1 yr wins by $36,824 over Sell + invest.
Estimates only. Not financial advice.
Sell + invest
| Bargain element (sale − strike) | $20,750 |
| Federal | |
| State | |
| Medicare | −$301 |
| Additional Medicare | −$187 |
| Market gain over 1 yr at 10.0% | $1,183 |
| LTCG on diversified gain (fed + state + NIIT) | −$333 |
| Net at year 1 | $12,686 |
Sell every share immediately; invest the after-tax cash at the market return for 1 yr, then liquidate. Diversified — no single-stock concentration risk.
Exercise + hold 1 yr
Best payout| Sale proceeds (year 1) | |
| LTCG tax (federal + state + NIIT) | −$14,724 |
| Net at year 1 | $49,509 |
Sold 4,164 shares at exercise to cover strike + tax; 836 shares held 1 yr for LTCG.
Social Security + Medicare are payroll taxes (collectively called FICA) — they apply because you're exercising as a current employee.
Both columns are stated in year-1 dollars: sell-now proceeds compound at the market return and pay LTCG on the gain at year 1; any cash paid out of pocket on the hold side carries the same opportunity cost.
Net at year N — by hold period
Estimates only. Excludes AMT (NSOs do not trigger AMT), state-AMT, multi-state moves, and disqualifying-disposition edge cases. Not financial advice.
You calculated one NSO decision. The beta plans NSOs alongside RSUs and ISOs in a single multi-year tax plan.
Request beta access →About Grafana Labs
Grafana Labs is a privately held Dev Tools company, incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York, NY.
Last reported secondary-market price: $14.15 per share (as of 2026-06-06). Your own 409A may differ.
Observability.
Equity grants at Grafana Labs typically include incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified stock options (NSOs).
Torkel Ödegaard created the open-source Grafana dashboard project in 2013; he co-founded Grafana Labs in 2014 alongside Raj Dutt and Anthony Woods to build a commercial observability platform around it. The company operates a managed cloud service and an enterprise distribution that unify metrics (Prometheus/Mimir), logs (Loki), traces (Tempo), and profiles (Pyroscope) under one query interface. Grafana Labs raised $270 million in 2024 at a $6 billion valuation and reports over 25 million users across its open-source and commercial tiers.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · research.contrary.com
Equity comp at Grafana Labs
- Recent share-sale events (industry term: tender offers):
- Sep 2025: led by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan · secondarylink.com
Researched 2026-05-10.
OptionsAhoy is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Grafana Labs.
Grafana Labs NSO exercise creates ordinary income on the bargain element (federal, state, and FICA) at the price on the day you exercise. The calculator works at any valuation, so you can model your exercise cost at the current 409A FMV, an expected IPO price, or post-IPO scenarios.
Example: at Grafana Labs's last reported price of $14.15, exercising 5,000 NSOs with a $4.25 strike creates a $49,500 bargain element, taxed as ordinary income on the day you exercise. Combined federal + state + FICA on that bargain typically lands between $13,365 and $22,275 depending on your bracket and state. The calculator above computes the exact figure for your situation and compares selling now vs. holding through the long-term capital-gains threshold.
All Grafana Labs tools → · Use the generic NSO Exercise Calculator for any company.
Grafana Labs equity questions
- How is a Grafana Labs NSO exercise taxed?
- Exercising a non-qualified stock option (NSO) creates ordinary income on the bargain element (the price on the day you exercise minus your strike), subject to federal income tax, state income tax, and FICA. The calculator above computes that tax for your Grafana Labs grant and compares selling the shares now against holding past the one-year mark for long-term capital-gains treatment.
- Does Grafana Labs grant ISOs, NSOs, or RSUs?
- Equity compensation at Grafana Labs typically takes the form of incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified stock options (NSOs). Incentive stock options can trigger the alternative minimum tax (AMT) when you exercise.
- Are Grafana Labs shares eligible for QSBS?
- They might be. Qualified small business stock (QSBS) under Internal Revenue Code Section 1202 can exclude federal tax on much of the gain when shares were acquired at original issuance from a C-corporation while its gross assets were under $50 million, and held at least five years. Whether your Grafana Labs shares qualify turns on when you acquired them and the company's asset size at that time.
One piece of the puzzle.
OptionsAhoy plans your Grafana Labs equity alongside hedging, vesting, and de-concentration, across bullish, neutral, and bearish market scenarios. Free during beta.