Graphite vs Pushgateway
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Graphite
Scalable real-time graphing and time series storage
VS
Pushgateway
Push acceptor for ephemeral and batch job metrics
| Feature | Graphite | Pushgateway |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 72 · Good | 87 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | JavaScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, source | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 6,119 | ★ 3,369 |
| First released | 2008 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Datadog |
What are Graphite and Pushgateway?
Graphite
Graphite is a monitoring tool that stores numeric time series data and renders graphs of it on demand. It consists of Carbon for metric ingestion, Whisper for storage, and a Django-based web app for visualization.
- Time series storage with Whisper
- On-demand graph rendering
- Plain-text metric protocol
- Widely supported by collectors
Pushgateway
The Prometheus Pushgateway allows ephemeral and batch jobs to expose their metrics to Prometheus. Jobs push metrics to the gateway, which Prometheus then scrapes on its regular schedule.
- Accepts pushed metrics
- Bridges batch jobs to Prometheus
- Persists metrics to disk
- Tiny footprint
Graphite vs Pushgateway: key differences
Graphite is written in JavaScript, while Pushgateway is built with Go. Pushgateway is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Graphite. Graphite is the more established project (first released 2008), while Pushgateway arrived in 2015.
Why pick each one
Choose Graphite if…
- Simple metric protocol
- Mature and stable
Watch out for
- Dated architecture
- Scaling requires extra components
Choose Pushgateway if…
- Solves batch job monitoring
- Simple to run
Watch out for
- Not for high-frequency metrics
- Can become a single point of failure
Frequently asked questions
Is Graphite or Pushgateway better?
Neither is universally better. Graphite has the larger community, while Pushgateway is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Graphite and Pushgateway free and open-source?
Yes. Graphite is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Pushgateway under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Graphite and Pushgateway with Docker?
Graphite: yes. Pushgateway: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Graphite or Pushgateway?
Pushgateway has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Graphite. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.