Kibana vs mtail
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
mtail
Extract Prometheus metrics from application log files
| Feature | Kibana | mtail |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, binary, kubernetes |
| GitHub stars | ★ 21,230 | ★ 4,024 |
| First released | 2013 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Splunk, Datadog | Splunk, Datadog Log Metrics |
Why pick each one
Frequently asked questions
Is Kibana or mtail better?
Neither is universally better. Kibana has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Kibana and mtail free and open-source?
Yes. Kibana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and mtail under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Kibana and mtail with Docker?
Kibana: yes. mtail: yes.