cAdvisor vs Pushgateway
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
Pushgateway
Push acceptor for ephemeral and batch job metrics
| Feature | cAdvisor | Pushgateway |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 96 · Excellent | 87 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 19,440 | ★ 3,369 |
| First released | 2014 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Datadog |
What are cAdvisor and Pushgateway?
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
Pushgateway
The Prometheus Pushgateway allows ephemeral and batch jobs to expose their metrics to Prometheus. Jobs push metrics to the gateway, which Prometheus then scrapes on its regular schedule.
- Accepts pushed metrics
- Bridges batch jobs to Prometheus
- Persists metrics to disk
- Tiny footprint
cAdvisor vs Pushgateway: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Pushgateway is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 64 MB for cAdvisor. CAdvisor has the considerably larger community, at 19,440 GitHub stars versus 3,369.
Why pick each one
Choose cAdvisor if…
- Zero configuration
- Lightweight
Watch out for
- Limited historical retention
- Best paired with Prometheus
Choose Pushgateway if…
- Solves batch job monitoring
- Simple to run
Watch out for
- Not for high-frequency metrics
- Can become a single point of failure
Frequently asked questions
Is cAdvisor or Pushgateway better?
Neither is universally better. cAdvisor has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are cAdvisor and Pushgateway free and open-source?
Yes. cAdvisor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Pushgateway under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run cAdvisor and Pushgateway with Docker?
cAdvisor: yes. Pushgateway: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, cAdvisor or Pushgateway?
Pushgateway has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 64 MB for cAdvisor. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.