OpenStatus vs Blackbox Exporter
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | OpenStatus | Blackbox Exporter |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 91 · Excellent | 84 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 9,143 | ★ 5,882 |
| First released | 2023 | 2016 |
| Replaces | Pingdom, Checkly | Pingdom |
What are OpenStatus and Blackbox Exporter?
OpenStatus
OpenStatus is an open-source synthetic monitoring and status page platform built in TypeScript. It runs latency checks against APIs and websites from multiple regions and publishes uptime and incidents to a public status page.
- Synthetic latency monitoring
- Public status pages
- Multi-region checks
- Incident tracking
Blackbox Exporter
The Blackbox Exporter allows Prometheus to probe endpoints over HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, TCP, ICMP, and gRPC. It is the standard way to perform black-box availability and latency monitoring with Prometheus.
- HTTP, TCP, DNS, ICMP probes
- TLS certificate checks
- Prometheus integration
- Multi-target probing
OpenStatus vs Blackbox Exporter: key differences
OpenStatus is written in TypeScript, while Blackbox Exporter is built with Go. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for OpenStatus versus Apache-2.0 for Blackbox Exporter. Blackbox Exporter is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 256 MB for OpenStatus. Blackbox Exporter is the more established project (first released 2016), while OpenStatus arrived in 2023.
Why pick each one
Choose OpenStatus if…
- Modern developer-focused UX
- Latency-aware monitoring
Watch out for
- Self-host setup is involved
- Younger project
Choose Blackbox Exporter if…
- Simple uptime monitoring
- Tiny footprint
Watch out for
- Needs Prometheus to be useful
- No standalone UI
Frequently asked questions
Is OpenStatus or Blackbox Exporter better?
Neither is universally better. OpenStatus has the larger community, while Blackbox Exporter is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are OpenStatus and Blackbox Exporter free and open-source?
Yes. OpenStatus is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Blackbox Exporter under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run OpenStatus and Blackbox Exporter with Docker?
OpenStatus: yes. Blackbox Exporter: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, OpenStatus or Blackbox Exporter?
Blackbox Exporter has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 256 MB for OpenStatus. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.