SHSelfHostIndex

Telegraf 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?
TE Telegraf Plugin-driven server agent for collecting metrics VS VM Vmstat Exporter Prometheus exporter for assorted system metrics
FeatureTelegrafVmstat Exporter
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score95 · Excellent88 · Excellent
CategoryMonitoring & StatusMonitoring & Status
LicenseMITApache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM64 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, binarydocker, binary
GitHub stars★ 17,825★ 3,630
First released20152016
ReplacesDatadog AgentDatadog Agent

What are Telegraf and Vmstat Exporter?

Telegraf

Telegraf is a plugin-driven agent for collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics and events. It has hundreds of input and output plugins covering systems, databases, IoT sensors, and cloud services.

  • Hundreds of input plugins
  • Single static binary
  • Low resource footprint
  • Outputs to many backends

Read the full Telegraf guide →

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

Telegraf vs Vmstat Exporter: key differences

Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — MIT for Telegraf versus Apache-2.0 for Vmstat Exporter. Telegraf has the considerably larger community, at 17,825 GitHub stars versus 3,630.

Why pick each one

Choose Telegraf if…

  • Huge plugin catalog
  • Trivial to deploy

Watch out for

  • Configuration can get verbose
  • No built-in UI
Telegraf 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 Telegraf or Vmstat Exporter better?

Telegraf is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Vmstat Exporter if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are Telegraf and Vmstat Exporter free and open-source?

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

Can I run Telegraf and Vmstat Exporter with Docker?

Telegraf: yes. Vmstat Exporter: yes.

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