Cloudprober vs Gatus
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Gatus
Developer-oriented health dashboard and status page
| Feature | Cloudprober | Gatus |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 81 · Excellent | 94 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 704 | ★ 12,145 |
| First released | 2017 | 2019 |
| Replaces | Pingdom, Catchpoint | UptimeRobot, Pingdom |
What are Cloudprober and Gatus?
Cloudprober
Cloudprober is an active monitoring tool that runs probes against your services to measure availability and latency from an external perspective. It auto-discovers targets, exports Prometheus metrics, and supports HTTP, ping, DNS, gRPC, and UDP probes.
- Black-box probing for many protocols
- Automatic target discovery
- Native Prometheus metrics
- Low memory footprint
Gatus
Gatus is a developer-oriented health dashboard that monitors endpoints and exposes a status page driven by simple YAML config. It targets engineers wanting a config-as-code uptime monitor. It is deployed via Docker or a single binary.
- Configuration entirely as YAML
- Health checks and conditions
- Many alerting providers
- Tiny resource footprint
Cloudprober vs Gatus: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Gatus is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 128 MB for Cloudprober. Cloudprober is the more established project (first released 2017), while Gatus arrived in 2019. Gatus has the considerably larger community, at 12,145 GitHub stars versus 704.
Why pick each one
Choose Cloudprober if…
- Cloud-native target discovery
- Single static binary
Watch out for
- YAML configuration required
- No bundled dashboard
Choose Gatus if…
- Config as code
- Extremely lightweight
- Easy to version control
Watch out for
- No UI-based editing
- Basic visualizations
Frequently asked questions
Is Cloudprober or Gatus better?
Gatus is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Cloudprober if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Cloudprober and Gatus free and open-source?
Yes. Cloudprober is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Gatus under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Cloudprober and Gatus with Docker?
Cloudprober: yes. Gatus: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Cloudprober or Gatus?
Gatus has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for Cloudprober. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.