Prometheus vs Grafana Pyroscope

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?
FeaturePrometheusGrafana Pyroscope
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseApache-2.0AGPL-3.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, helmdocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 65,616★ 11,618
First released20152020
ReplacesDatadogDatadog Profiler

Why pick each one

Choose Prometheus if…

  • Powerful query language
  • Reliable and scalable
  • Huge ecosystem
Prometheus details

Choose Grafana Pyroscope if…

  • Pinpoints performance hotspots
  • Scales efficiently
Grafana Pyroscope details

Frequently asked questions

Is Prometheus or Grafana Pyroscope better?

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

Are Prometheus and Grafana Pyroscope free and open-source?

Yes. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Grafana Pyroscope under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Prometheus and Grafana Pyroscope with Docker?

Prometheus: yes. Grafana Pyroscope: yes.

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