Grafana vs PostgreSQL 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?
Grafana
Open observability dashboards and visualization
VS
PostgreSQL Exporter
Prometheus exporter for PostgreSQL server metrics
| Feature | Grafana | PostgreSQL Exporter |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, helm | docker, binary, kubernetes |
| GitHub stars | ★ 76,153 | ★ 3,588 |
| First released | 2014 | 2016 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Datadog PostgreSQL, pganalyze |
Why pick each one
Choose Grafana if…
- Beautiful flexible dashboards
- Broad data source support
- Strong community
Choose PostgreSQL Exporter if…
- Battle-tested in production
- Rich default metrics
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana or PostgreSQL Exporter better?
Neither is universally better. Grafana has the larger community, while PostgreSQL Exporter is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Grafana and PostgreSQL Exporter free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and PostgreSQL Exporter under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana and PostgreSQL Exporter with Docker?
Grafana: yes. PostgreSQL Exporter: yes.