Pushgateway vs Thanos
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Thanos
Highly available Prometheus setup with long-term storage
| Feature | Pushgateway | Thanos |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 87 · Excellent | 94 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,369 | ★ 14,214 |
| First released | 2015 | 2018 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Datadog, Grafana Cloud |
What are Pushgateway and Thanos?
Pushgateway
The Prometheus Pushgateway allows ephemeral and batch jobs to expose their metrics to Prometheus. Jobs push metrics to the gateway, which Prometheus then scrapes on its regular schedule.
- Accepts pushed metrics
- Bridges batch jobs to Prometheus
- Persists metrics to disk
- Tiny footprint
Thanos
Thanos extends Prometheus with global query view, unlimited retention, and high availability. It uses object storage to keep metrics cheaply for years while presenting a single query endpoint across many Prometheus instances.
- Global query view
- Unlimited metric retention
- Object storage backend
- Downsampling for fast queries
Pushgateway vs Thanos: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Pushgateway is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Thanos. Pushgateway is the more established project (first released 2015), while Thanos arrived in 2018. Thanos has the considerably larger community, at 14,214 GitHub stars versus 3,369.
Why pick each one
Choose Pushgateway if…
- Solves batch job monitoring
- Simple to run
Watch out for
- Not for high-frequency metrics
- Can become a single point of failure
Choose Thanos if…
- Scales Prometheus to massive deployments
- Cheap long-term storage
Watch out for
- Complex multi-component architecture
- Steep learning curve
Frequently asked questions
Is Pushgateway or Thanos better?
Neither is universally better. Thanos has the larger community, while Pushgateway is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Pushgateway and Thanos free and open-source?
Yes. Pushgateway is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Thanos under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Pushgateway and Thanos with Docker?
Pushgateway: yes. Thanos: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Pushgateway or Thanos?
Pushgateway has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Thanos. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.