SHSelfHostIndex

Elasticsearch Exporter vs Apache SkyWalking

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
EL Elasticsearch Exporter Prometheus exporter for Elasticsearch cluster metrics VS AP Apache SkyWalking APM and observability for cloud-native architectures
FeatureElasticsearch ExporterApache SkyWalking
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoJava
Setup difficultyEasyHard
Min. RAM64 MB2,048 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, kubernetesdocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 2,085★ 24,915
First released20162015
ReplacesElastic Stack Monitoring, Datadog ElasticsearchNew Relic, Datadog

Why pick each one

Choose Elasticsearch Exporter if…

  • Avoids proprietary monitoring
  • Broad metric coverage
Elasticsearch Exporter details

Choose Apache SkyWalking if…

  • Full observability suite
  • Strong Apache governance
Apache SkyWalking details

Frequently asked questions

Is Elasticsearch Exporter or Apache SkyWalking better?

Neither is universally better. Apache SkyWalking has the larger community, while Elasticsearch Exporter is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Elasticsearch Exporter and Apache SkyWalking free and open-source?

Yes. Elasticsearch Exporter is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Apache SkyWalking under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Elasticsearch Exporter and Apache SkyWalking with Docker?

Elasticsearch Exporter: yes. Apache SkyWalking: yes.

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