Kibana vs Thanos
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Kibana
Visualization and exploration for Elasticsearch data
VS
Thanos
Highly available Prometheus setup with long-term storage
| Feature | Kibana | Thanos |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 96 · Excellent | 94 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 21,299 | ★ 14,214 |
| First released | 2013 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Splunk, Datadog | Datadog, Grafana Cloud |
What are Kibana and Thanos?
Kibana
Kibana is a visualization and management interface for Elasticsearch, widely used for log analytics and observability. It provides dashboards, search, and alerting over indexed operational data.
- Log and metric dashboards
- Discover search interface
- Alerting and machine learning
- Maps and visualizations
Thanos
Thanos extends Prometheus with global query view, unlimited retention, and high availability. It uses object storage to keep metrics cheaply for years while presenting a single query endpoint across many Prometheus instances.
- Global query view
- Unlimited metric retention
- Object storage backend
- Downsampling for fast queries
Kibana vs Thanos: key differences
Kibana is written in TypeScript, while Thanos is built with Go. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Kibana versus Apache-2.0 for Thanos. Kibana is the more established project (first released 2013), while Thanos arrived in 2018.
Why pick each one
Choose Kibana if…
- Rich visualization options
- Mature ecosystem
Watch out for
- Tied to Elasticsearch
- Heavy resource usage
Choose Thanos if…
- Scales Prometheus to massive deployments
- Cheap long-term storage
Watch out for
- Complex multi-component architecture
- Steep learning curve
Frequently asked questions
Is Kibana or Thanos better?
Kibana is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Thanos if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Kibana and Thanos free and open-source?
Yes. Kibana is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Thanos under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Kibana and Thanos with Docker?
Kibana: yes. Thanos: yes.