Shinken vs Thruk

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?
FeatureShinkenThruk
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseAGPL-3.0GPL-1.0
LanguagePythonPerl
Setup difficultyHardMedium
Min. RAM512 MB512 MB
Deploymentbare-metal, sourcebare-metal, docker, source
GitHub stars★ 1,136★ 439
First released20092009
ReplacesSolarWindsSolarWinds

Why pick each one

Choose Shinken if…

  • Scales horizontally
  • Reuses Nagios ecosystem
Shinken details

Choose Thruk if…

  • Unifies many monitoring cores
  • Mature and stable
Thruk details

Frequently asked questions

Is Shinken or Thruk better?

Neither is universally better. Shinken has the larger community, while Thruk is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Shinken and Thruk free and open-source?

Yes. Shinken is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Thruk under GPL-1.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Shinken and Thruk with Docker?

Shinken: check the project docs for container support. Thruk: yes.

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