Grafana k6 vs Smokeping Prober

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?
FeatureGrafana k6Smokeping Prober
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumEasy
Min. RAM256 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, bare-metaldocker, binary, kubernetes
GitHub stars★ 31,211★ 729
First released20172018
ReplacesLoadRunner, BlazeMeterSmokePing, PingPlotter

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana k6 if…

  • Developer-friendly scripting
  • Great CI integration
Grafana k6 details

Choose Smokeping Prober if…

  • Drop-in for Prometheus stacks
  • Very lightweight
Smokeping Prober details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana k6 or Smokeping Prober better?

Neither is universally better. Grafana k6 has the larger community, while Smokeping Prober is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Grafana k6 and Smokeping Prober free and open-source?

Yes. Grafana k6 is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Smokeping Prober under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Grafana k6 and Smokeping Prober with Docker?

Grafana k6: yes. Smokeping Prober: yes.

Related comparisons