Grafana vs Smokeping

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

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FeatureGrafanaSmokeping
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0GPL-2.0
LanguageTypeScriptPerl
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB128 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metal, helmbare-metal, docker, source
GitHub stars★ 76,153★ 1,938
First released20142003
ReplacesDatadogPRTG

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana if…

  • Beautiful flexible dashboards
  • Broad data source support
  • Strong community
Grafana details

Choose Smokeping if…

  • Excellent for connection quality
  • Lightweight
Smokeping details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana or Smokeping better?

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

Are Grafana and Smokeping free and open-source?

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

Can I run Grafana and Smokeping with Docker?

Grafana: yes. Smokeping: yes.

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