Prometheus vs Uptrace
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Prometheus
Metrics-based monitoring and alerting toolkit
VS
Uptrace
OpenTelemetry-based tracing, metrics, and logs tool
| Feature | Prometheus | Uptrace |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | ≈5-minute setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 100 · Excellent | 88 · Excellent |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSL-1.1 |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, helm | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 66,196 | ★ 4,290 |
| First released | 2015 | 2021 |
| Replaces | Datadog | Datadog, New Relic |
What are Prometheus and Uptrace?
Prometheus
Prometheus is a metrics-based monitoring system and time-series database with a powerful query language and alerting. It targets engineers monitoring cloud-native infrastructure. It is deployed via Docker, binaries, or Helm.
- Pull-based metrics collection
- PromQL query language
- Built-in alerting rules
- Cloud-native standard
Uptrace
Uptrace is an open-source observability tool that uses OpenTelemetry to collect distributed traces, metrics, and logs. It stores data in ClickHouse and provides a clean UI for analyzing application performance.
- Distributed tracing
- Metrics and logs support
- ClickHouse storage
- OpenTelemetry-native
Prometheus vs Uptrace: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Prometheus versus BSL-1.1 for Uptrace. Prometheus is the more established project (first released 2015), while Uptrace arrived in 2021. Prometheus has the considerably larger community, at 66,196 GitHub stars versus 4,290.
Why pick each one
Choose Prometheus if…
- Powerful query language
- Reliable and scalable
- Huge ecosystem
Watch out for
- No long-term storage by default
- Dashboards need Grafana
Choose Uptrace if…
- Efficient ClickHouse backend
- Easy to deploy
Watch out for
- BSL license restrictions
- Smaller community
Frequently asked questions
Is Prometheus or Uptrace 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 Uptrace free and open-source?
Yes. Prometheus is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Uptrace under BSL-1.1. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Prometheus and Uptrace with Docker?
Prometheus: yes. Uptrace: yes.