Chronograf vs Thanos
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
Thanos
Highly available Prometheus setup with long-term storage
| Feature | Chronograf | Thanos |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | ★ 14,167 |
| First released | 2016 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Grafana Cloud, Datadog Dashboards | Datadog, Grafana Cloud |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is Chronograf or Thanos better?
Neither is universally better. Thanos 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 Thanos free and open-source?
Yes. Chronograf is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Thanos under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Chronograf and Thanos with Docker?
Chronograf: yes. Thanos: yes.