Grafana Loki vs Smokeping Prober

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?
FeatureGrafana LokiSmokeping Prober
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumEasy
Min. RAM512 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, helmdocker, binary, kubernetes
GitHub stars★ 28,687★ 729
First released20182018
ReplacesSplunk, Datadog LogsSmokePing, PingPlotter

Why pick each one

Choose Grafana Loki if…

  • Cheap to run compared to full-text indexers
  • Familiar Prometheus-style labels
Grafana Loki details

Choose Smokeping Prober if…

  • Drop-in for Prometheus stacks
  • Very lightweight
Smokeping Prober details

Frequently asked questions

Is Grafana Loki or Smokeping Prober better?

Neither is universally better. Grafana Loki has the larger community, while Smokeping Prober is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Grafana Loki and Smokeping Prober free and open-source?

Yes. Grafana Loki is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Smokeping Prober under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Grafana Loki and Smokeping Prober with Docker?

Grafana Loki: yes. Smokeping Prober: yes.

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