Alertmanager vs Karma
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?
Alertmanager
Handles alerts from Prometheus with routing and silencing
VS
Karma
Alert dashboard for Prometheus Alertmanager
| Feature | Alertmanager | Karma |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 8,572 | ★ 2,674 |
| First released | 2015 | 2017 |
| Replaces | PagerDuty, Opsgenie | PagerDuty |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is Alertmanager or Karma better?
Neither is universally better. Alertmanager has the larger community, while Karma is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Alertmanager and Karma free and open-source?
Yes. Alertmanager is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Karma under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Alertmanager and Karma with Docker?
Alertmanager: yes. Karma: yes.