Glances vs Healthchecks

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?
FeatureGlancesHealthchecks
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseLGPL-3.0BSD-3-Clause
LanguagePythonPython
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM128 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, binarydocker, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 33,269★ 10,226
First released20122015
ReplacesDatadogPingdom

Why pick each one

Choose Glances if…

  • Very easy to run
  • Lightweight
  • Good single-host overview
Glances details

Choose Healthchecks if…

  • Catches silently failing jobs
  • Lots of notification channels
  • Lightweight
Healthchecks details

Frequently asked questions

Is Glances or Healthchecks better?

Neither is universally better. Glances has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Glances and Healthchecks free and open-source?

Yes. Glances is licensed under LGPL-3.0 and Healthchecks under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Glances and Healthchecks with Docker?

Glances: yes. Healthchecks: yes.

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