Graphite vs Thanos
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?
Graphite
Scalable real-time graphing and time series storage
VS
Thanos
Highly available Prometheus setup with long-term storage
| Feature | Graphite | Thanos |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | JavaScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, source | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 6,102 | ★ 14,167 |
| First released | 2008 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Datadog, Grafana Cloud |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is Graphite or Thanos better?
Neither is universally better. Thanos has the larger community, while Graphite is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Graphite and Thanos free and open-source?
Yes. Graphite is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Thanos under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Graphite and Thanos with Docker?
Graphite: yes. Thanos: yes.