SHSelfHostIndex

OpenTelemetry Collector vs Process Exporter

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?
OP OpenTelemetry Collector Vendor-agnostic agent for telemetry collection and export VS PR Process Exporter Prometheus exporter for per-process metrics
FeatureOpenTelemetry CollectorProcess Exporter
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score91 · Excellent25 · At risk
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseApache-2.0MIT
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM128 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, binarydocker, binary
GitHub stars★ 7,593★ 2,155
First released20202016
ReplacesDatadog AgentDatadog Agent

What are OpenTelemetry Collector and Process Exporter?

OpenTelemetry Collector

The OpenTelemetry Collector receives, processes, and exports telemetry data such as traces, metrics, and logs. It is a vendor-neutral way to standardize how observability data flows to any backend.

  • Receives traces, metrics, and logs
  • Vendor-neutral pipelines
  • Rich processor ecosystem
  • Exports to any backend

Read the full OpenTelemetry Collector guide →

Process Exporter

process-exporter exposes per-process and per-process-group CPU, memory, and IO metrics for Prometheus. It enables fine-grained resource attribution on busy hosts.

  • Per-process metrics
  • Process group aggregation
  • CPU, memory, IO data
  • Prometheus compatible

OpenTelemetry Collector vs Process Exporter: key differences

Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for OpenTelemetry Collector versus MIT for Process Exporter. Process Exporter is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 128 MB for OpenTelemetry Collector. Process Exporter is the more established project (first released 2016), while OpenTelemetry Collector arrived in 2020. OpenTelemetry Collector has the considerably larger community, at 7,593 GitHub stars versus 2,155.

Why pick each one

Choose OpenTelemetry Collector if…

  • Industry-standard telemetry hub
  • Highly extensible

Watch out for

  • Many extensions to choose from
  • Config can grow complex
OpenTelemetry Collector details

Choose Process Exporter if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (2.2k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Go
Process Exporter details

Frequently asked questions

Is OpenTelemetry Collector or Process Exporter better?

Neither is universally better. OpenTelemetry Collector has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are OpenTelemetry Collector and Process Exporter free and open-source?

Yes. OpenTelemetry Collector is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Process Exporter under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run OpenTelemetry Collector and Process Exporter with Docker?

OpenTelemetry Collector: yes. Process Exporter: yes.

Which is lighter on resources, OpenTelemetry Collector or Process Exporter?

Process Exporter has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for OpenTelemetry Collector. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.

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