Cloudprober vs Blackbox Exporter
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Cloudprober | Blackbox Exporter |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 81 · Excellent | 84 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 704 | ★ 5,882 |
| First released | 2017 | 2016 |
| Replaces | Pingdom, Catchpoint | Pingdom |
What are Cloudprober and Blackbox Exporter?
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
Blackbox Exporter
The Blackbox Exporter allows Prometheus to probe endpoints over HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, TCP, ICMP, and gRPC. It is the standard way to perform black-box availability and latency monitoring with Prometheus.
- HTTP, TCP, DNS, ICMP probes
- TLS certificate checks
- Prometheus integration
- Multi-target probing
Cloudprober vs Blackbox Exporter: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Blackbox Exporter is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 128 MB for Cloudprober. Blackbox Exporter has the considerably larger community, at 5,882 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 Blackbox Exporter if…
- Simple uptime monitoring
- Tiny footprint
Watch out for
- Needs Prometheus to be useful
- No standalone UI
Frequently asked questions
Is Cloudprober or Blackbox Exporter better?
Blackbox Exporter 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 Blackbox Exporter free and open-source?
Yes. Cloudprober is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Blackbox Exporter under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Cloudprober and Blackbox Exporter with Docker?
Cloudprober: yes. Blackbox Exporter: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Cloudprober or Blackbox Exporter?
Blackbox Exporter has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for Cloudprober. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.