Coroot vs Thanos
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Thanos
Highly available Prometheus setup with long-term storage
| Feature | Coroot | Thanos |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 92 · Excellent | 94 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 7,932 | ★ 14,212 |
| First released | 2022 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Datadog, New Relic | Datadog, Grafana Cloud |
What are Coroot and Thanos?
Coroot
Coroot is an open-source observability tool that uses eBPF to gather metrics, logs, traces, and profiles with zero instrumentation. It automatically surfaces service maps, SLOs, and root-cause insights.
- eBPF zero-instrumentation telemetry
- Automatic service maps
- Built-in SLO tracking
- Root-cause analysis
Thanos
Thanos extends Prometheus with global query view, unlimited retention, and high availability. It uses object storage to keep metrics cheaply for years while presenting a single query endpoint across many Prometheus instances.
- Global query view
- Unlimited metric retention
- Object storage backend
- Downsampling for fast queries
Coroot vs Thanos: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Thanos is the more established project (first released 2018), while Coroot arrived in 2022.
Why pick each one
Choose Coroot if…
- No code changes required
- Insightful out of the box
Watch out for
- Needs a recent Linux kernel
- Resource use grows with scale
Choose Thanos if…
- Scales Prometheus to massive deployments
- Cheap long-term storage
Watch out for
- Complex multi-component architecture
- Steep learning curve
Frequently asked questions
Is Coroot or Thanos better?
Neither is universally better. Thanos has the larger community, while Coroot is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Coroot and Thanos free and open-source?
Yes. Coroot is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Thanos under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Coroot and Thanos with Docker?
Coroot: yes. Thanos: yes.