cAdvisor 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?
cAdvisor
Container resource usage and performance analysis
VS
Kibana
Visualization and exploration for Elasticsearch data
| Feature | cAdvisor | Kibana |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | Go | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 19,342 | ★ 21,230 |
| First released | 2014 | 2013 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Splunk, Datadog |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is cAdvisor or Kibana better?
Neither is universally better. Kibana 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 Kibana free and open-source?
Yes. cAdvisor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Kibana under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run cAdvisor and Kibana with Docker?
cAdvisor: yes. Kibana: yes.