SHSelfHostIndex

Pinpoint APM vs Kibana

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
PI Pinpoint APM Application performance management for large-scale systems VS KI Kibana Visualization and exploration for Elasticsearch data
FeaturePinpoint APMKibana
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseApache-2.0AGPL-3.0
LanguageJavaTypeScript
Setup difficultyHardMedium
Min. RAM2,048 MB1,024 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metaldocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 13,855★ 21,230
First released20152013
ReplacesNew Relic, DynatraceSplunk, Datadog

Why pick each one

Choose Pinpoint APM if…

  • Detailed call-stack tracing
  • Good for large JVM systems
Pinpoint APM details

Choose Kibana if…

  • Rich visualization options
  • Mature ecosystem
Kibana details

Frequently asked questions

Is Pinpoint APM or Kibana better?

Kibana is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Pinpoint APM if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are Pinpoint APM and Kibana free and open-source?

Yes. Pinpoint APM is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Kibana under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Pinpoint APM and Kibana with Docker?

Pinpoint APM: yes. Kibana: yes.

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