InfluxDB vs Prometheus
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
Prometheus
Metrics-based monitoring and alerting toolkit
| Feature | InfluxDB | Prometheus |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | ≈5-minute setup |
| Health score | 98 · Excellent | 100 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Rust | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, binary, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 31,754 | ★ 66,196 |
| First released | 2013 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Datadog, AWS Timestream | Datadog |
What are InfluxDB and Prometheus?
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
Prometheus
Prometheus is a metrics-based monitoring system and time-series database with a powerful query language and alerting. It targets engineers monitoring cloud-native infrastructure. It is deployed via Docker, binaries, or Helm.
- Pull-based metrics collection
- PromQL query language
- Built-in alerting rules
- Cloud-native standard
InfluxDB vs Prometheus: key differences
InfluxDB is written in Rust, while Prometheus is built with Go. Licensing differs — MIT for InfluxDB versus Apache-2.0 for Prometheus. InfluxDB is the more established project (first released 2013), while Prometheus arrived in 2015. Prometheus has the considerably larger community, at 66,196 GitHub stars versus 31,754.
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 Prometheus if…
- Powerful query language
- Reliable and scalable
- Huge ecosystem
Watch out for
- No long-term storage by default
- Dashboards need Grafana
Frequently asked questions
Is InfluxDB or Prometheus better?
Neither is universally better. Prometheus has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are InfluxDB and Prometheus free and open-source?
Yes. InfluxDB is licensed under MIT and Prometheus under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run InfluxDB and Prometheus with Docker?
InfluxDB: yes. Prometheus: yes.