Glances vs Blackbox 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?
FeatureGlancesBlackbox Exporter
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseLGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguagePythonGo
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM128 MB32 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, binarydocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 33,269★ 5,818
First released20122016
ReplacesDatadogPingdom

Why pick each one

Choose Glances if…

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

Choose Blackbox Exporter if…

  • Simple uptime monitoring
  • Tiny footprint
Blackbox Exporter details

Frequently asked questions

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

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

Can I run Glances and Blackbox Exporter with Docker?

Glances: yes. Blackbox Exporter: yes.

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