Chronograf vs Cortex
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Chronograf
Visualization and admin interface for the InfluxData stack
VS
Cortex
Horizontally scalable, multi-tenant Prometheus as a service
| Feature | Chronograf | Cortex |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Dashboards & Startpages | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, binary | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,566 | ★ 5,844 |
| First released | 2016 | 2016 |
| Replaces | Grafana Cloud, Datadog Dashboards | Datadog, Grafana Cloud |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is Chronograf or Cortex better?
Neither is universally better. Cortex has the larger community, while Chronograf is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Chronograf and Cortex free and open-source?
Yes. Chronograf is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Cortex under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Chronograf and Cortex with Docker?
Chronograf: yes. Cortex: yes.