Checkmate vs Vigil
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Checkmate
Open-source uptime and infrastructure monitoring tool
VS
Vigil
Microservices status page with built-in monitoring
| Feature | Checkmate | Vigil |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 93 · Excellent | 72 · Good |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 10,875 | ★ 1,948 |
| First released | 2024 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Pingdom, Better Uptime | Statuspage, Pingdom |
What are Checkmate and Vigil?
Checkmate
Checkmate is an open-source server monitoring application that tracks uptime, response times, and infrastructure health. It offers incident notifications and a clean dashboard for homelabs and small teams.
- Uptime and response monitoring
- Infrastructure health agent
- Incident notifications
- Modern dashboard
Vigil
Vigil is a microservices status page that monitors distributed infrastructure and reports outages. It can probe HTTP, TCP, and ICMP endpoints and includes a local Prober for push-based reporting.
- Status page and monitoring
- HTTP, TCP, ICMP probes
- Push reporting with Vigil Reporter
- Alerts to Slack and email
Checkmate vs Vigil: key differences
Checkmate is written in TypeScript, while Vigil is built with Rust. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Checkmate versus MPL-2.0 for Vigil. Vigil is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 256 MB for Checkmate. Vigil is the more established project (first released 2018), while Checkmate arrived in 2024. Checkmate has the considerably larger community, at 10,875 GitHub stars versus 1,948.
Why pick each one
Choose Checkmate if…
- Clean modern interface
- Active development
Watch out for
- Newer project
- Feature set still growing
Choose Vigil if…
- Very low resource use
- Combines checks and status page
Watch out for
- Configuration via TOML files
- Smaller community
Frequently asked questions
Is Checkmate or Vigil better?
Checkmate is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Vigil if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Checkmate and Vigil free and open-source?
Yes. Checkmate is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Vigil under MPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Checkmate and Vigil with Docker?
Checkmate: yes. Vigil: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Checkmate or Vigil?
Vigil has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 256 MB for Checkmate. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.