Cacti vs Thruk
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Cacti | Thruk |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 85 · Excellent | 74 · Good |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | GPL-2.0 | GPL-1.0 |
| Language | PHP | Perl |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, docker, source | bare-metal, docker, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,871 | ★ 442 |
| First released | 2001 | 2009 |
| Replaces | PRTG, SolarWinds | SolarWinds |
What are Cacti and Thruk?
Cacti
Cacti is a complete network graphing solution that harnesses RRDtool for data storage and graphing. It polls devices over SNMP and scripts, presenting historical performance data through a web interface.
- RRDtool-based graphing
- SNMP and script polling
- Plugin architecture
- Templating for devices
Thruk
Thruk is a multi-backend monitoring web interface compatible with Nagios, Icinga, Naemon, and Shinken. It provides a fast UI for managing many monitoring instances from one place.
- Multi-backend support
- Fast monitoring UI
- Reporting and SLA tools
- Business process modeling
Cacti vs Thruk: key differences
Cacti is written in PHP, while Thruk is built with Perl. Licensing differs — GPL-2.0 for Cacti versus GPL-1.0 for Thruk. Cacti is the more established project (first released 2001), while Thruk arrived in 2009. Cacti has the considerably larger community, at 1,871 GitHub stars versus 442.
Why pick each one
Choose Cacti if…
- Mature and reliable
- Detailed graph templates
Watch out for
- Dated interface
- Configuration can be tedious
Choose Thruk if…
- Unifies many monitoring cores
- Mature and stable
Watch out for
- Requires a Nagios-family core
- Dated styling
Frequently asked questions
Is Cacti or Thruk better?
Neither is universally better. Cacti has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Cacti and Thruk free and open-source?
Yes. Cacti is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Thruk under GPL-1.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Cacti and Thruk with Docker?
Cacti: yes. Thruk: yes.