The 10 Best Prometheus Alternatives 2024 (Open-source and Paid)

Prometheus may be a critically acclaimed alien movie from 2012, but it’s also a highly-praised open-source monitoring tool.

Strangely enough, the open-source Prometheus might give you alien vibes with its high-tech customization, flexibility, and wide range of useful features.

That said, Prometheus isn’t meant for everyone. Because of its open-source nature, it can be extremely difficult to set up and maintain, not to mention the potential overhead cost of hosting it yourself. For that reason, many people have searched for Prometheus alternatives.

If this sounds like you, don’t worry! There are plenty of Prometheus alternatives out there to choose from, both open-source and cloud (paid). We’ll mix it up down below with both examples so that you have the best overview.

But, before we jump into those alternatives, let’s dig a little deeper into what Prometheus has to offer.

Prometheus Features

Prometheus is primarily known for its infrastructure monitoring capabilities, but it’s not limited to just that. It can be used for several monitoring applications, including synthetic monitoring and APM.

One of the aspects that makes Prometheus so attractive to so many is the fact that it’s so customizable and versatile. It collects and stores time-series data, recording it with a timestamp so that the user can monitor cloud-native environments like Kubernetes, and be alerted when things go awry.

As far as features go specifically, here’s what you can expect from Prometheus:

• Multidimensional data model
• PromQL - Flexible query language
• Zero reliance on distributed storage
• Pull model for time series data collection
• Intermediary gateway for pushing time series
• Service discovery and static configuration
• Support for multiple graphing and dashboard modes

I’ll note here, too, that Prometheus is free to use, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t cost you anything. We talked about this a bit above, but the cost of ownership on an open-source tool like Prometheus can oftentimes be more expensive than paying for a cloud-based solution. This is often the reason people look for Prometheus alternatives to begin with.

The 10 Best Prometheus Alternatives in 2024

1. Better Stack

Better Stack provides a comprehensive Prometheus alternative that covers all the key aspects of synthetic monitoring. This includes HTTPS keyword checks, Heartbeat, SSL, Ping, TLD, TCP/UDP, POP3/IMAP/SMTP, and DNS server monitoring.

We monitor your website as frequently as every 30 seconds from multiple locations to prevent false alerts. Additionally, you have the option to set geo-specific checks to address location-related issues.

Better Stack also integrates seamlessly with the most popular third-party tools and platforms such as Heroku, Datadog, New Relic, Grafana On-Call, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, AWS CloudWatch, and Google Cloud.

Each incident is thoroughly documented with a screenshot, error log, second-by-second incident timeline, post-mortem, and advanced incident escalation rules. Our on-call scheduling and integrations allow you to plan ahead and ensure prompt responses. In the event of downtime, you can create custom status pages with personalized designs for your users to subscribe to.

A cool feature that Better Stack offers is the ability to run Playwright script. You can simply copy and paste your script into your dashboard, and Better Stack can help monitor front-end transactions, too.

🌟Key features

• Uptime monitoring
• Incident management
• Log management
• API monitoring

➕Pros

• 30-second check frequency
• Able to run Playwright script
• Incident Management
• Built-in Status Pages
• On-call scheduling
• Dozens of integrations

➖Cons

• Not a full-stack observability solution
• Not yet as feature-rich as some of the larger, much older platforms in the space

💲Pricing

Better Stack Uptime is available for free in a basic monitoring and incident management package.

Uptime premium packages start at just $25/month and come with 50 monitors, 5 status pages, and built-in incident management.

The Logs premium packages also start at $25/month and come with a 30GB allowance and 15 days of retention.

2. Zabbix

Zabbix, an open-source monitoring tool, is widely embraced for its array of practical features. It enables you to oversee various aspects of your system, from transactions to application performance and even real browser monitoring. With pre-built templates for different servers and operating systems, Zabbix streamlines the monitoring process.

One of Zabbix's strengths is its ability to gather data from diverse sources such as network devices, cloud services, containers, databases, applications, and real browser monitoring. In case of issues, Zabbix alerts you via communication channels like On-Call, Opsgenie, Pagerduty, Slack, and more.

What's impressive is Zabbix's provision of learning resources and certifications, aiding users in mastering its functionalities. Despite its lightweight nature, Zabbix excels in monitoring virtually every facet of your system.

Not a big fan of Zabbix? Check out some similar tools to Zabbix.

🌟Key features

• Open-source monitoring

➕Pros

• Lightweight, yet powerful

➖Cons

• The cost of self-hosting Zabbix can be expensive
• User reviews report a steep learning curve

3. Datadog

Datadog will make it to just about every list that mentions anything in the website monitoring category simply because of its wide array of features. Keep in mind, though, that while it's renowned for its thorough synthetic monitoring capabilities, its higher cost makes it better suited for larger enterprises.

Datadog is very user-friendly and even creates tests without any coding required. With its web recorder, you can interact with your website just like a regular user, yielding real-time results. In case of issues, Datadog offers detailed insights, including screenshots, performance metrics, server traces, error logs, and more, facilitating effective troubleshooting.

Moreover, Datadog allows you to compare your website's performance both within and outside your network firewall, while also offering automation tools to streamline tasks. With these comprehensive monitoring options, you can efficiently tackle issues and gain valuable insights into your website and systems.

Not a big fan of Datadog? Check out some similar tools to Datadog.

🌟Key features

• Synthetic monitoring
• Log management
• Real User monitoring
• Infrastructure monitoring
• + A lot more

➕Pros

• Full-stack observability
• 20+ individual solutions
• Hundreds of integrations

➖Cons

• Datadog is outrageously expensive

💲Pricing

Datadog has a lot of solutions - too many to list here. What we can do, however, is go over some of the highlights, just to give you a taste of how expensive it is.

• Synthetic monitoring: $5 for every 10,000 API runs and $12 for every 1,000 browser runs.
• Infrastructure monitoring: $15 per host per month.
• Real user monitoring (RUM): $1.50 for every 1,000 sessions per month.
• Log management: $0.10 for every GB ingested and $1.70 for every million log events per month.

4. Graphite

Graphite is open-source and comprises three core components: Graphite, Carbon, and Whisper. Graphite web is utilized for rendering graphs, Carbon for listening to time series data, and Whisper for storing this data.

However, Graphite's UI may not be the most impressive. Thankfully, it seamlessly integrates with Grafana for enhanced visualizations. It's worth noting that Graphite itself isn't a data collection tool; rather, applications must be configured to send data to Graphite. Carbon then listens for this data and forwards it to Whisper, which stores it in time series format on the filesystem.

Despite its UI limitations, this open-source system collaborates effectively to provide valuable insights into virtually any application, process, or service, including APIs, which makes it a very comparable Prometheus alternative.

🌟Key features

• Open-source monitoring

➕Pros

• Simple metric storage

➖Cons

• The cost of self-hosting Graphite can be expensive
• Needs a Grafana integration for the best visualizations
• Apps need to be configured before sending data to Graphite

5. Dynatrace

In addition to its prowess in API monitoring, Dynatrace also serves as a compelling alternative to Prometheus, especially for enterprises seeking a comprehensive observability solution. However, much like Datadog above, it is expensive.

Unlike Prometheus, which requires significant configuration and management overhead, Dynatrace offers a more streamlined approach. Its intuitive interface and automated capabilities simplify the monitoring process, reducing the burden on IT teams.

Moreover, Dynatrace provides extensive out-of-the-box functionality, including advanced AI-powered analytics and automatic problem detection. This allows organizations to quickly gain insights into their systems without the need for extensive manual setup.

Furthermore, Dynatrace's scalability and global test locations make it an attractive choice for businesses operating at scale or across multiple regions. Its ability to handle large volumes of data and provide real-time insights across distributed environments sets it apart as a robust alternative to Prometheus.

Overall, Dynatrace offers a comprehensive observability solution that not only excels in API monitoring but also serves as a powerful alternative to Prometheus, providing enterprises with the tools they need to effectively monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize their systems.

Not a big fan of Dynatrace? Check out some similar tools to Dynatrace.

🌟Key features

• Full-stack monitoring
• Synthetic monitoring
• Real user monitoring
• Infrastructure monitoring
• Log management and analytics

➕Pros

• Feature-rich
• Powerful alerting capabilities
• Utilizes AI

➖Cons

• User reviews report Dynatrace being expensive
• User reviews report difficulties with data collection
• User reviews report difficulties with the debugging tool

💲Pricing

Dynatrace pricing relies on data consumption. For example, instead of billing per monitor for synthetics, charges are based on the number of synthetic requests. Instead of charging per host for infrastructure monitoring, they charge per hour.

At first glance, the cost of $0.001 per request may seem negligible. However, when analyzed further, it becomes relatively pricey at scale. For instance, running checks at 2-minute intervals from a single location results in 30 requests per hour. When multiplied by 24 hours in a day, this amounts to 720 requests daily. Further multiplying that by the average number of days in a month, 30, we get 21,600.

Multiplying 21,600 by $0.001, you're looking at $21.6 per monitor! With this math, it is even more expensive if you shorten the check frequencies.

Looking at infrastructure monitoring, $0.04 per hour for any size host doesn’t look too bad. But, with 24 hours in a day and 30 days in a month, that’s $28.80/month per host.

6. Signoz

Signoz is renowned as a comprehensive full-stack, open-source APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tool, ideal for API monitoring. Notably, it's designed to seamlessly integrate with OpenTelemetry, a widely recognized standard for instrumenting cloud-native applications.

Particularly well-suited for monitoring APIs built on serverless architecture or microservices, Signoz allows you to track service endpoints and gain valuable insights into metrics such as P95 and P99 latencies.

🌟Key features

• Open-source monitoring

➕Pros

• Out-of-the-box visualizations and dashboards
• Easy to configure
• Helpful community

➖Cons

• The cost of self-hosting Signoz can be expensive
• Very few reviews online
• Limited feature set
• User reviews report occasional issues with log-based alerting

7. Site 24x7

Site 24x7 is a decent, middle-of-the-road Prometheus alternative. It’s a cloud-based platform designed specifically for websites and servers. Unlike some of the other mentions on this list, Site 24x7 works well for businesses ranging from small to large.

Site 24x7, like many things today, is powered by AI. It provides an all-in-one solution for website monitoring, giving you everything you need for website monitoring basics.

One of the downsides to Site 24x7 is that it doesn’t provide anything extraordinary. Sure, it’s reliable and quick in most cases, but it’s not going the extra mile to expand its products or feature set.

Not a big fan of Site 24x7? Check out some similar tools to Site 24x7.

🌟Key features

• Website monitoring
• Server monitoring
• Synthetic monitoring
• Real user monitoring

➕Pros

• Simple and reliable

➖Cons

• Very limited feature set
• User reviews report a cluttered UI that’s hard to use
• User reviews report some technical restrictions

💲Pricing

Site24x7's pricing structure may seem a bit complex, but they offer some basic figures to help clarify what you're getting for your money.

For website monitoring, plans start at $9 per month, providing basic uptime monitors. The cost can scale up to $225 for their enterprise plan, which includes synthetic monitors, network monitors, and more.

Similarly, infrastructure monitoring begins at $9 per month, but with limitations – only 10 monitors and 500MB of log data for the entire month, which is not much.

Site 24x7 really gets you with its multiple add-ons. For instance, an extra 10 infrastructure monitors will set you back an additional $15 per month, and every 10GB of log data incurs an extra $10 charge.

APM starts at $35 per month, but like the other plans, it's packed with add-ons. The same applies to MSP plans, which start at $45 per month but quickly escalate with add-ons.

Their all-in-one solution combines all tools into one package, starting at $45 per month. However, costs can quickly accumulate with additional add-ons.

8. Dotcom-monitor

Dotcom-monitor is a great Prometheus alternative, especially if you’re using it for API monitoring. Dotcom Monitor’s Web API monitoring service enables users to track the performance and uptime of SOAP, REST, JSON, and XML web services. Additionally, Dotcom-monitor provides integration with Postman, facilitating the use of integration tests for internal API testing through a shared public link to the Dotcom-Monitor platform.

The API monitoring solution from Dotcom-monitor is straightforward yet highly efficient. Users can monitor from 30 global locations and set up multi-step API calls to validate complex API sequences, ensuring comprehensive monitoring coverage.

🌟Key features

• Web application monitoring
• API monitoring
• Infrastructure monitoring

➕Pros

• Helpful dashboards and real-time data
• Multi-location testing

➖Cons

• The price per monitor is expensive based on other prices on this list
• User reviews indicate occasional reporting complexities
• User reviews report some difficulties in setting up complex workflows

💲Pricing

Dotcom-Monitor provides Web API monitoring as part of its Web Services package, starting at $19.95 per month. Pricing varies based on check frequency and task frequency, with options for either 5-minute checks in the Premium package or 1-minute checks in the Platinum package.

9. Sematext

Sematext is a robust alternative to Prometheus, offering a sophisticated solution for both API and website monitoring.

With Synthetics, users gain access to a diverse array of monitoring capabilities, including uptime and API monitoring from multiple locations, even within private networks and behind firewalls. It covers all layers of monitoring, from DNS and TCP to SSL and HTTP, while also providing customizable API monitoring and vigilance over SSL certificates, website performance, and end-to-end visibility.

With Infrastructure, users can map their entire stack. All the many integrations let you collect, report, and track various metrics to get a real-time view of your infrastructure, whether it’s on-premise or cloud-based.

In contrast to Prometheus, Sematext adopts a unified approach, presenting a single-pane interface that facilitates seamless correlation of data across various metrics. This integration extends beyond infrastructure metrics to encompass application logs, events, real-user data, and synthetic performance metrics, empowering users with comprehensive insights and analysis capabilities.

🌟Key features

• Infrastructure monitoring
• Synthetic monitoring
• Real user monitoring
• Log management

➕Pros

• Full-stack monitoring
• Out-of-the-box dashboards
• Price-per-monitor option

➖Cons

• Configuring dashboards can be overwhelming
• Log monitoring is expensive per GB
• User reviews report occasional difficulties with user management

💲Pricing

Sematext offers flexible pricing options, including a pay-as-you-go model where users customize their subscriptions based on their requirements. In this model, Synthetics starts at $2 per monitor and $7 per Browser monitor.

Alternatively, Sematext provides standard subscription packages. The starter package for Synthetics is the Standard plan, beginning at $29 per month. This plan includes a maximum of 40 HTTP monitors and 5 Browser monitors, with data retention for up to 30 days.

Infrastructure monitoring starts at a very digestible $3.60/host, but it only comes with 7 days of retention.

10. Splunk

Recently acquired for a staggering $28 billion, Splunk has emerged as a formidable player in the website monitoring realm. With its true full-stack observability and integrated security features, Splunk stands out among its competitors.

Positioned as an all-encompassing solution, Splunk pledges to combat threats, minimize downtime, and expedite issue resolution. Its resilience and comprehensive feature set make it a valuable asset for organizations seeking robust monitoring solutions.

What sets Splunk apart, and likely contributes to its premium price, is its extensive network. With over 2,200 partners spanning various industries, Splunk ensures users can leverage the platform to its fullest potential. Additionally, with a community of over 18,000 active members and 1,800 Splunk experts, users can access support for problem-solving, architecture, deployment, and scalability.

Not a big fan of Splunk? Check out some similar tools to Splunk.

🌟Key features

• Full stack monitoring
• Synthetic monitoring
• Real user monitoring
• + A lot more

➕Pros

• All-in-one observability and security tool
• Helpful network of experts

➖Cons

• Splunk is known for being very expensive
• User reviews report a learning curve and intense resource consumption

💲Pricing

Splunk's pricing structure lacks transparency, with only a handful of their solutions displaying prices online, often buried within their website. The available prices are primarily for their cloud observability offerings:

• End-to-End: $75 per host per month
• App & Infra: $60 per host per month
• APM: $55 per host per month
• Infrastructure: $15 per host per month
• RUM: $14 per 10,000 sessions
• Synthetics: $1 per 10,000 uptime requests
• On-call: $5 per user per month

The 10 Best Prometheus Alternatives Comparison

Conclusion

Since Prometheus is an open-source tool, we added a few OS options to this list for a healthy balance. However, since the most common reason for users looking for Prometheus alternatives happens to be the overhead cost of running an open-source tool, we didn’t add too many.

The reality is that there are tons of Prometheus alternatives out there to choose from. Each one has its pros and cons, and each person will be different in choosing the tool that best suits their needs.

What’s important is that you take your time, do your research, and use this list as a reference if ever you have any questions.

Article by

Zach McDaniel

With his laptop as a sword and coffee machine as a shield, Zach is a content strategist here at Better Stack. When he's not wordsmithing, he's putting together PCs, working on cars, or scheming about how to own a zoo one day.

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