Kibana vs Pulse Monitor
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?
Kibana
Visualization and exploration for Elasticsearch data
VS
Pulse Monitor
Self-hosted monitoring of Proxmox and infrastructure
| Feature | Kibana | Pulse Monitor |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 21,230 | ★ 6,509 |
| First released | 2013 | 2024 |
| Replaces | Splunk, Datadog | Datadog |
Why pick each one
Choose Pulse Monitor if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 6.5k GitHub stars
Frequently asked questions
Is Kibana or Pulse Monitor better?
Neither is universally better. Kibana has the larger community, while Pulse Monitor is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Kibana and Pulse Monitor free and open-source?
Yes. Kibana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Pulse Monitor under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Kibana and Pulse Monitor with Docker?
Kibana: yes. Pulse Monitor: yes.