Glances vs Kafka Exporter

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?
FeatureGlancesKafka Exporter
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseLGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguagePythonGo
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM128 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, binarydocker, binary, kubernetes
GitHub stars★ 33,269★ 2,537
First released20122017
ReplacesDatadogConfluent Control Center, Datadog Kafka

Why pick each one

Choose Glances if…

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

Choose Kafka Exporter if…

  • Simpler than JMX monitoring
  • Focused lag visibility
Kafka Exporter details

Frequently asked questions

Is Glances or Kafka Exporter 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 Kafka Exporter free and open-source?

Yes. Glances is licensed under LGPL-3.0 and Kafka Exporter under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Glances and Kafka Exporter with Docker?

Glances: yes. Kafka Exporter: yes.

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