SHSelfHostIndex

Logstash vs Thanos

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?
LO Logstash Server-side data processing pipeline for logs VS TH Thanos Highly available Prometheus setup with long-term storage
FeatureLogstashThanos
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageJavaGo
Setup difficultyMediumHard
Min. RAM1,024 MB1,024 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, binarydocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 14,912★ 14,167
First released20092018
ReplacesFluentdDatadog, Grafana Cloud

Why pick each one

Choose Logstash if…

  • Powerful transformation language
  • Huge plugin library
Logstash details

Choose Thanos if…

  • Scales Prometheus to massive deployments
  • Cheap long-term storage
Thanos details

Frequently asked questions

Is Logstash or Thanos better?

Logstash 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 Logstash and Thanos free and open-source?

Yes. Logstash is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Thanos under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Logstash and Thanos with Docker?

Logstash: yes. Thanos: yes.

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