Checkmk vs Prometheus
Checkmk
checkmk.com
Prometheus
prometheus.ioSide by side
| Figure | Checkmk | Prometheus |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $275/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 1 |
| Spec score · Kubernetes Monitoring | 9.4 (#1) | 7.7 (#32) |
| Spec score · Container Monitoring | 9.4 (#1) | 7.7 (#35) |
| Spec score · Metrics Monitoring Tools | 9.4 (#1) | 7.7 (#21) |
| Spec score · Infrastructure Monitoring | 9.4 (#1) | 7.7 (#23) |
| Spec score · Cloud Monitoring | 9.4 (#1) | 7.6 (#15) |
| Spec score · Monitoring Observability | 9.4 (#1) | 7.7 (#17) |
| Spec score · Server Monitoring | 9.4 (#2) | 7.6 (#28) |
| Deployment | Checkmk can run on customer hardware or virtualized, with packages for major Linux distributions, Docker and Virtual Appliance. | Official components have precompiled binaries and Docker images, and the Prometheus download page lists Windows, macOS, and Linux builds. |
| Founded | 2007 | 2012 |
| Integrations | Checkmk advertises more than 2,000 built-in integrations covering hardware, networks, applications, operating systems and cloud or container platforms. | The ecosystem includes client libraries, exporters, Pushgateway, and Alertmanager; integrations also include Grafana for visualization and webhook-based alert notifications. |
| Support | The Pro plan includes professional support for 8h x 5d, while Ultimate includes 10h x 5d and can be upgraded to 24h x 5d. | The project offers community support through channels including Slack, mailing lists, and a Discourse forum, and lists independent commercial support providers separately. |
| What it does | Checkmk provides unified infrastructure monitoring and observability across servers, networks, applications, databases, cloud, containers and user experience. | Prometheus is an open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit that collects and stores metrics as time series. |
Plans
Checkmk
- CommunityFree
- Synthetic MonitoringFree
- Pro$275 a month
- Cloud$290 a month
- Ultimate$400 a month
In their own words
Checkmk
Checkmk monitors cloud, hybrid, and data center infrastructure, including containers and networks. For web, mail, and database servers, it combines more than 2,000 smart checks with automatic discovery and network mapping. Monitoring can use native agents for Windows, Linux, and other systems, agentless SNMP and TCP/UDP checks, or API-based checks over HTTP/XML, SSH, or TELNET. Cloud coverage includes AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, with automatic component detection and Quick Setup. One instance can monitor thousands of servers, while distributed monitoring supports horizontal scaling. Community includes more than 2,000 integrations and is intended for smaller environments, scaling to approximately 100 hosts. The software can run on customer hardware or virtualized infrastructure, with Linux distribution packages, Docker, and a Virtual Appliance. The Community plan is free forever and includes community support. The pricing note lists paid plans from €190/mo (annual) and a 30-day trial. Other listed plan prices use USD: Pro is $275 a month, Cloud is $290 a month, and Ultimate is $400 a month. Platforms include API, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows.
Prometheus
Prometheus is a free, open-source toolkit for systems monitoring and alerting that collects metrics as time series. Each series is identified by a metric name and key-value labels, and PromQL is used to query the data. Prometheus typically gathers metrics by pulling over HTTP; it can also receive pushed data through an intermediary gateway. Targets can be found with service discovery or configured statically. The main server runs as a standalone monolithic binary without external dependencies, and official components are available as precompiled binaries and Docker images. Its ecosystem includes client libraries, exporters, Pushgateway and Alertmanager, with Grafana for visualization and webhooks for alert notifications. Prometheus and most exporters support TLS, client certificate authentication and HTTP Basic Authentication. The project advises against exposing component HTTP endpoints to public networks without protective measures. Servers do not depend on network storage or remote services, which the project says can help during outages. Prometheus is not recommended for uses requiring 100% accurate data, such as per-request billing.