Ping Exporter vs Smokeping Prober

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?
FeaturePing ExporterSmokeping Prober
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseMITApache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM64 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, kubernetesdocker, binary, kubernetes
GitHub stars★ 631★ 729
First released20182018
ReplacesPingPlotter, ThousandEyesSmokePing, PingPlotter

Why pick each one

Choose Ping Exporter if…

  • Trivial to deploy
  • Minimal configuration
Ping Exporter details

Choose Smokeping Prober if…

  • Drop-in for Prometheus stacks
  • Very lightweight
Smokeping Prober details

Frequently asked questions

Is Ping Exporter or Smokeping Prober better?

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

Are Ping Exporter and Smokeping Prober free and open-source?

Yes. Ping Exporter is licensed under MIT and Smokeping Prober under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Ping Exporter and Smokeping Prober with Docker?

Ping Exporter: yes. Smokeping Prober: yes.

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