Cortex vs Graphite
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Graphite
Scalable real-time graphing and time series storage
| Feature | Cortex | Graphite |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 90 · Excellent | 72 · Good |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | JavaScript |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5,865 | ★ 6,119 |
| First released | 2016 | 2008 |
| Replaces | Datadog, Grafana Cloud | Datadog |
What are Cortex and Graphite?
Cortex
Cortex provides a horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant, long-term store for Prometheus metrics. It offers a single API endpoint for querying and writing time series data across clusters.
- Multi-tenant metrics storage
- Horizontally scalable
- Prometheus-compatible API
- Long-term retention
Graphite
Graphite is a monitoring tool that stores numeric time series data and renders graphs of it on demand. It consists of Carbon for metric ingestion, Whisper for storage, and a Django-based web app for visualization.
- Time series storage with Whisper
- On-demand graph rendering
- Plain-text metric protocol
- Widely supported by collectors
Cortex vs Graphite: key differences
Cortex is written in Go, while Graphite is built with JavaScript. Graphite is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Cortex. Graphite is the more established project (first released 2008), while Cortex arrived in 2016.
Why pick each one
Choose Cortex if…
- Built for very large scale
- True multi-tenancy
Watch out for
- Operationally heavy
- Overkill for small setups
Choose Graphite if…
- Simple metric protocol
- Mature and stable
Watch out for
- Dated architecture
- Scaling requires extra components
Frequently asked questions
Is Cortex or Graphite better?
Graphite is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Cortex if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Cortex and Graphite free and open-source?
Yes. Cortex is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Graphite under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Cortex and Graphite with Docker?
Cortex: yes. Graphite: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Cortex or Graphite?
Graphite has the smaller minimum footprint at 512 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Cortex. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.