SHSelfHostIndex

NGINX Prometheus Exporter 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.

Not the right match-up?
NG NGINX Prometheus Exporter Official Prometheus exporter for NGINX and NGINX Plus VS AP Apache SkyWalking APM and observability for cloud-native architectures
FeatureNGINX Prometheus ExporterApache SkyWalking
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoJava
Setup difficultyEasyHard
Min. RAM64 MB2,048 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, kubernetesdocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 2,008★ 24,915
First released20182015
ReplacesDatadog NGINX, New Relic NGINXNew Relic, Datadog

Why pick each one

Choose NGINX Prometheus Exporter if…

  • Maintained by NGINX team
  • Trivial to deploy
NGINX Prometheus Exporter details

Choose Apache SkyWalking if…

  • Full observability suite
  • Strong Apache governance
Apache SkyWalking details

Frequently asked questions

Is NGINX Prometheus Exporter or Apache SkyWalking better?

Neither is universally better. Apache SkyWalking has the larger community, while NGINX Prometheus Exporter is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are NGINX Prometheus Exporter and Apache SkyWalking free and open-source?

Yes. NGINX Prometheus Exporter is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Apache SkyWalking under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run NGINX Prometheus Exporter and Apache SkyWalking with Docker?

NGINX Prometheus Exporter: yes. Apache SkyWalking: yes.

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