Grafana Mimir vs Apache SkyWalking
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Grafana Mimir
Scalable long-term storage for Prometheus metrics
VS
Apache SkyWalking
APM and observability for cloud-native architectures
| Feature | Grafana Mimir | Apache SkyWalking |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 90 · Excellent | 97 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Java |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 2,048 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5,238 | ★ 24,962 |
| First released | 2022 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Datadog, Chronosphere | New Relic, Datadog |
What are Grafana Mimir and Apache SkyWalking?
Grafana Mimir
Grafana Mimir is an open-source, horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant time series database for Prometheus and OpenTelemetry metrics. It is designed to store and query hundreds of millions of active series.
- Massive cardinality support
- Multi-tenant by design
- Fast query engine
- Object storage backend
Apache SkyWalking
Apache SkyWalking is an APM and observability platform for distributed systems, especially microservices and cloud-native architectures. It provides tracing, metrics, logging, and service topology analysis.
- Distributed tracing and metrics
- Service topology maps
- eBPF and OTel integration
- Alerting engine
Grafana Mimir vs Apache SkyWalking: key differences
Grafana Mimir is written in Go, while Apache SkyWalking is built with Java. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Grafana Mimir versus Apache-2.0 for Apache SkyWalking. Grafana Mimir is the lighter option, starting around 1,024 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for Apache SkyWalking. Apache SkyWalking is the more established project (first released 2015), while Grafana Mimir arrived in 2022. Apache SkyWalking has the considerably larger community, at 24,962 GitHub stars versus 5,238.
Why pick each one
Choose Grafana Mimir if…
- Proven at billion-series scale
- Easier to operate than Cortex
Watch out for
- Resource intensive
- Complex for small homelabs
Choose Apache SkyWalking if…
- Full observability suite
- Strong Apache governance
Watch out for
- Steep learning curve
- Storage backend required
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Mimir or Apache SkyWalking better?
Neither is universally better. Apache SkyWalking has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Grafana Mimir and Apache SkyWalking free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana Mimir is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Apache SkyWalking under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana Mimir and Apache SkyWalking with Docker?
Grafana Mimir: yes. Apache SkyWalking: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Grafana Mimir or Apache SkyWalking?
Grafana Mimir has the smaller minimum footprint at 1,024 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for Apache SkyWalking. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.