Karma vs Robusta
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?
Karma
Alert dashboard for Prometheus Alertmanager
VS
Robusta
Kubernetes observability and automated troubleshooting
| Feature | Karma | Robusta |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | TypeScript | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,674 | ★ 3,072 |
| First released | 2017 | 2021 |
| Replaces | PagerDuty | Datadog, PagerDuty |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is Karma or Robusta better?
Neither is universally better. Robusta has the larger community, while Karma is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Karma and Robusta free and open-source?
Yes. Karma is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Robusta under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Karma and Robusta with Docker?
Karma: yes. Robusta: check the project docs for container support.