cAdvisor vs Grafana Mimir
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
Grafana Mimir
Scalable long-term storage for Prometheus metrics
| Feature | cAdvisor | Grafana Mimir |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 96 · Excellent | 90 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 19,440 | ★ 5,238 |
| First released | 2014 | 2022 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Datadog, Chronosphere |
What are cAdvisor and Grafana Mimir?
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
Grafana Mimir
Grafana Mimir is an open-source, horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant time series database for Prometheus and OpenTelemetry metrics. It is designed to store and query hundreds of millions of active series.
- Massive cardinality support
- Multi-tenant by design
- Fast query engine
- Object storage backend
cAdvisor vs Grafana Mimir: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for cAdvisor versus AGPL-3.0 for Grafana Mimir. CAdvisor is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Grafana Mimir. CAdvisor is the more established project (first released 2014), while Grafana Mimir arrived in 2022. CAdvisor has the considerably larger community, at 19,440 GitHub stars versus 5,238.
Why pick each one
Choose cAdvisor if…
- Zero configuration
- Lightweight
Watch out for
- Limited historical retention
- Best paired with Prometheus
Choose Grafana Mimir if…
- Proven at billion-series scale
- Easier to operate than Cortex
Watch out for
- Resource intensive
- Complex for small homelabs
Frequently asked questions
Is cAdvisor or Grafana Mimir better?
cAdvisor is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Grafana Mimir if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are cAdvisor and Grafana Mimir free and open-source?
Yes. cAdvisor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Grafana Mimir under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run cAdvisor and Grafana Mimir with Docker?
cAdvisor: yes. Grafana Mimir: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, cAdvisor or Grafana Mimir?
cAdvisor has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Grafana Mimir. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.