Cachet vs Cstate
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Cachet
Open-source status page system for communicating outages
VS
Cstate
Static status page based on Hugo and Markdown
| Feature | Cachet | Cstate |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | ≈5-minute setup |
| Health score | 76 · Good | 77 · Good |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Language | PHP | HTML |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | one-click, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 15,249 | ★ 2,894 |
| First released | 2014 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Statuspage, Better Uptime | Statuspage |
What are Cachet and Cstate?
Cachet
Cachet is an open-source status page system written in PHP (Laravel) for communicating downtime and incidents. It supports components, incident timelines, scheduled maintenance windows, metrics, and subscriber notifications.
- Public status page
- Incident timeline updates
- Scheduled maintenance windows
- Subscriber notifications
Cstate
cState is a status page system built on the Hugo static site generator, using Markdown files for incidents. It produces a fast, lightweight status page that can be hosted on any static host.
- Static Hugo-based site
- Markdown incident files
- Very fast and lightweight
- Hostable anywhere
Cachet vs Cstate: key differences
Cachet is written in PHP, while Cstate is built with HTML. Licensing differs — BSD-3-Clause for Cachet versus MIT for Cstate. Cstate is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 256 MB for Cachet. Cachet is the more established project (first released 2014), while Cstate arrived in 2018. Cachet has the considerably larger community, at 15,249 GitHub stars versus 2,894. Cachet lists first-class Docker deployment; Cstate does not.
Why pick each one
Choose Cachet if…
- Polished public-facing page
- REST API
Watch out for
- Development has been intermittent
- Needs a database
Choose Cstate if…
- No backend needed
- Cheap to host
Watch out for
- Manual incident editing
- No automatic checks
Frequently asked questions
Is Cachet or Cstate better?
Neither is universally better. Cachet has the larger community, while Cstate is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Cachet and Cstate free and open-source?
Yes. Cachet is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Cstate under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Cachet and Cstate with Docker?
Cachet: yes. Cstate: check the project docs for container support.
Which is lighter on resources, Cachet or Cstate?
Cstate has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 256 MB for Cachet. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.