SHSelfHostIndex

Process Exporter vs Vmstat 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?
PR Process Exporter Prometheus exporter for per-process metrics VS VM Vmstat Exporter Prometheus exporter for assorted system metrics
FeatureProcess ExporterVmstat Exporter
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score25 · At risk88 · Excellent
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseMITApache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM64 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, binarydocker, binary
GitHub stars★ 2,155★ 3,630
First released20162016
ReplacesDatadog AgentDatadog Agent

What are Process Exporter and Vmstat Exporter?

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

Vmstat Exporter

A Prometheus exporter that exposes additional system-level metrics for scraping. It complements the standard node exporter for niche monitoring needs.

  • Exposes host metrics
  • Prometheus compatible
  • Low overhead
  • Cross-platform support

Process Exporter vs Vmstat Exporter: key differences

Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — MIT for Process Exporter versus Apache-2.0 for Vmstat Exporter.

Why pick each one

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

Choose Vmstat Exporter if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (3.6k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Go
Vmstat Exporter details

Frequently asked questions

Is Process Exporter or Vmstat Exporter better?

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

Are Process Exporter and Vmstat Exporter free and open-source?

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

Can I run Process Exporter and Vmstat Exporter with Docker?

Process Exporter: yes. Vmstat Exporter: yes.

Related comparisons