Grafana Mimir vs VictoriaMetrics
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
VictoriaMetrics
Fast, cost-effective time series database and monitoring solution
| Feature | Grafana Mimir | VictoriaMetrics |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 90 · Excellent | 95 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5,238 | ★ 17,760 |
| First released | 2022 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Datadog, Chronosphere | Datadog, Grafana Cloud |
What are Grafana Mimir and VictoriaMetrics?
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
VictoriaMetrics
VictoriaMetrics is a fast, cost-effective, and scalable monitoring solution and time series database. It is a drop-in replacement for Prometheus storage with lower resource usage and a high-performance query engine.
- Low memory footprint
- MetricsQL query language
- Single-binary or cluster mode
- Prometheus-compatible
Grafana Mimir vs VictoriaMetrics: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Grafana Mimir versus Apache-2.0 for VictoriaMetrics. VictoriaMetrics is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Grafana Mimir. VictoriaMetrics is the more established project (first released 2018), while Grafana Mimir arrived in 2022. VictoriaMetrics has the considerably larger community, at 17,760 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 VictoriaMetrics if…
- Excellent compression and speed
- Easy single-binary deployment
Watch out for
- MetricsQL differs slightly from PromQL
- Smaller ecosystem than Prometheus
Frequently asked questions
Is Grafana Mimir or VictoriaMetrics better?
VictoriaMetrics is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Grafana Mimir if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Grafana Mimir and VictoriaMetrics free and open-source?
Yes. Grafana Mimir is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and VictoriaMetrics under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Grafana Mimir and VictoriaMetrics with Docker?
Grafana Mimir: yes. VictoriaMetrics: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Grafana Mimir or VictoriaMetrics?
VictoriaMetrics has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Grafana Mimir. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.