bottom (btm) vs PM2

bottom is a free graphical system and process monitor that runs in a terminal on Linux, macOS and Windows. It charts CPU use for each core and as an average, along with RAM and swap over time. Network and disk I/O are graphed too, with a control for zooming the displayed time interval. Its process widget lets users display, sort and search process information, use tree mode and send kill signals. Other widgets show disk capacity and use, temperature sensors and battery use. Appearance and behavior can be changed through command-line options or a configuration file, including themes, layout, widget behavior and filtering. An htop-inspired basic mode offers a simpler view, and a selected widget can be expanded to fill the terminal. A read-only option blocks actions that affect the system, such as stopping processes. Installation is documented through package managers, Cargo and pre-built release binaries. Official platform support covers macOS, Linux and Windows; architecture support varies by system. Android and some other systems may work unofficially with limited testing and support.

PM2 is a daemon process manager for managing applications and keeping them online. PM2 Runtime is an open-source process manager; PM2 Plus adds monitoring for Node.js production applications. Runtime supports cluster mode, zero-downtime reloads, watch and restart, startup scripts, log management and memory-based reloads. For containers, pm2-runtime can run Node.js applications with process fallback, flow control, monitoring and source-map support. PM2 Plus lists a web monitoring interface, application overview, issue tracking, custom metrics, server health checks and Node.js V8 monitoring. Its alerts include email and Slack notifications, while Enterprise adds rule-based alerting. The AI Assistant connects Claude, Cursor and other MCP-compatible assistants to monitoring data through OAuth with a PM2.io account. Documentation covers Docker, cloud providers, Heroku, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Nginx and deployment workflows. Runtime costs nothing, and Plus costs $79 a month.