Glances vs Telegraf

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?
FeatureGlancesTelegraf
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseLGPL-3.0MIT
LanguagePythonGo
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM128 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, binarydocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 33,269★ 17,736
First released20122015
ReplacesDatadogDatadog Agent

Why pick each one

Choose Glances if…

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

Choose Telegraf if…

  • Huge plugin catalog
  • Trivial to deploy
Telegraf details

Frequently asked questions

Is Glances or Telegraf 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 Telegraf free and open-source?

Yes. Glances is licensed under LGPL-3.0 and Telegraf under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Glances and Telegraf with Docker?

Glances: yes. Telegraf: yes.

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