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.
cAdvisor
Container resource usage and performance analysis
VS
Kibana
Visualization and exploration for Elasticsearch data
| Feature | cAdvisor | Kibana |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 96 · Excellent | 96 · Excellent |
| 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 | ★ 19,440 | ★ 21,299 |
| First released | 2014 | 2013 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Splunk, Datadog |
What are cAdvisor and Kibana?
cAdvisor
cAdvisor provides container users with an understanding of the resource usage and performance characteristics of their running containers. It exposes per-container CPU, memory, network, and filesystem metrics.
- Per-container resource metrics
- Live web UI
- Prometheus metrics export
- Auto-discovers containers
Kibana
Kibana is a visualization and management interface for Elasticsearch, widely used for log analytics and observability. It provides dashboards, search, and alerting over indexed operational data.
- Log and metric dashboards
- Discover search interface
- Alerting and machine learning
- Maps and visualizations
cAdvisor vs Kibana: key differences
CAdvisor is written in Go, while Kibana is built with TypeScript. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for cAdvisor versus AGPL-3.0 for Kibana. CAdvisor is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Kibana.
Why pick each one
Choose cAdvisor if…
- Zero configuration
- Lightweight
Watch out for
- Limited historical retention
- Best paired with Prometheus
Choose Kibana if…
- Rich visualization options
- Mature ecosystem
Watch out for
- Tied to Elasticsearch
- Heavy resource usage
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.
Which is lighter on resources, cAdvisor or Kibana?
cAdvisor has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Kibana. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.