Gatus vs Vigil
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
VS
Vigil
Microservices status page with built-in monitoring
| Feature | Gatus | Vigil |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 94 · Excellent | 71 · Good |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 12,145 | ★ 1,948 |
| First released | 2019 | 2018 |
| Replaces | UptimeRobot, Pingdom | Statuspage, Pingdom |
What are Gatus and Vigil?
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
Vigil
Vigil is a microservices status page that monitors distributed infrastructure and reports outages. It can probe HTTP, TCP, and ICMP endpoints and includes a local Prober for push-based reporting.
- Status page and monitoring
- HTTP, TCP, ICMP probes
- Push reporting with Vigil Reporter
- Alerts to Slack and email
Gatus vs Vigil: key differences
Gatus is written in Go, while Vigil is built with Rust. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Gatus versus MPL-2.0 for Vigil. Vigil is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 64 MB for Gatus. Gatus has the considerably larger community, at 12,145 GitHub stars versus 1,948.
Why pick each one
Choose Gatus if…
- Config as code
- Extremely lightweight
- Easy to version control
Watch out for
- No UI-based editing
- Basic visualizations
Choose Vigil if…
- Very low resource use
- Combines checks and status page
Watch out for
- Configuration via TOML files
- Smaller community
Frequently asked questions
Is Gatus or Vigil better?
Gatus is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Vigil if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Gatus and Vigil free and open-source?
Yes. Gatus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Vigil under MPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Gatus and Vigil with Docker?
Gatus: yes. Vigil: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Gatus or Vigil?
Vigil has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 64 MB for Gatus. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.