cAdvisor vs Jaeger
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?
cAdvisor
Container resource usage and performance analysis
VS
Jaeger
End-to-end distributed tracing for microservices
| Feature | cAdvisor | Jaeger |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 19,342 | ★ 23,082 |
| First released | 2014 | 2017 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Datadog APM, New Relic |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is cAdvisor or Jaeger better?
Neither is universally better. Jaeger has the larger community, while cAdvisor is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are cAdvisor and Jaeger free and open-source?
Yes. cAdvisor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Jaeger under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run cAdvisor and Jaeger with Docker?
cAdvisor: yes. Jaeger: yes.