InfluxDB vs Pushgateway
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
InfluxDB
Purpose-built time series database for metrics and events
VS
Pushgateway
Push acceptor for ephemeral and batch job metrics
| Feature | InfluxDB | Pushgateway |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 98 · Excellent | 87 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Rust | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 31,754 | ★ 3,369 |
| First released | 2013 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Datadog, AWS Timestream | Datadog |
What are InfluxDB and Pushgateway?
InfluxDB
InfluxDB is an open-source time series database designed for high write and query loads of metrics, events, and analytics data. It powers monitoring dashboards, IoT data collection, and real-time analytics.
- High-throughput time series storage
- SQL and Flux query support
- Built-in retention policies
- Telegraf collector ecosystem
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
InfluxDB vs Pushgateway: key differences
InfluxDB is written in Rust, while Pushgateway is built with Go. Licensing differs — MIT for InfluxDB versus Apache-2.0 for Pushgateway. Pushgateway is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 512 MB for InfluxDB. InfluxDB is the more established project (first released 2013), while Pushgateway arrived in 2015. InfluxDB has the considerably larger community, at 31,754 GitHub stars versus 3,369.
Why pick each one
Choose InfluxDB if…
- Excellent for IoT and metrics
- Rich tooling and integrations
Watch out for
- Clustering reserved for enterprise
- Query language changes between versions
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 InfluxDB or Pushgateway better?
Neither is universally better. InfluxDB 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 InfluxDB and Pushgateway free and open-source?
Yes. InfluxDB is licensed under MIT and Pushgateway under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run InfluxDB and Pushgateway with Docker?
InfluxDB: yes. Pushgateway: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, InfluxDB or Pushgateway?
Pushgateway has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for InfluxDB. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.