Inspektor Gadget vs Parca
Inspektor Gadget
inspektor-gadget.io
Parca
parca.devSide by side
| Figure | Inspektor Gadget | Parca |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · eBPF Observability Tools | 7.9 (#13) | 8.1 (#9) |
| Deployment | On Kubernetes, Inspektor Gadget is deployed as a DaemonSet, with one pod per cluster node. | The project documents installation using binaries, containers, Kubernetes, and Snaps. |
| Linux requirement | Gadgets developed by the project require Linux kernel 5.10 or later with BTF enabled. | The quick start says the Parca Agent binary works only on Linux. |
| Security | Official image-based gadgets are signed with cosign, and the documentation describes verifying gadget signatures. | The project says the Agent source is open source, it is written in Go, and its binaries and container images are fully reproducible; the Agent needs privileged access to load eBPF programs. |
Plans
In their own words
Inspektor Gadget
Inspektor Gadget is an open-source toolkit and framework for collecting eBPF data and inspecting Kubernetes clusters and Linux hosts. Its gadgets package eBPF programs as OCI images that can be deployed to examine systems. The toolkit enriches low-level kernel data with context such as Kubernetes pod and container names, and can export collected information to observability tools. WebAssembly modules can process data and customize operators; developers can also use the framework through a Go library. In Kubernetes, it runs as a DaemonSet, with one pod on each cluster node. Project gadgets require Linux kernel 5.10 or later with BTF enabled. Supported Kubernetes environments include Minikube, AKS, EKS, GKS, OpenShift, and Talos; AWS Fargate, Azure Container Instances, and GKE Autopilot are listed as unsupported. Official image-based gadgets are signed, and operators can restrict which gadgets may run by digest, tag, or image prefix. Inspektor Gadget has no long-term support releases: only the latest release receives maintenance and security updates.
Parca
Parca is a self-hosted profiling system that collects and stores CPU, memory, I/O, and other profiles for queries over time. Its eBPF-based Parca Agent captures user-space and kernel-space stack traces, while the system also accepts valid pprof-formatted profiles pushed through gRPC or pulled from targets over HTTP. Users can query by labels, compare dimensions such as processes or code versions, and view profiles in the web interface with Icicle Graphs. A Grafana plugin can display profiles stored in Parca. The agent supports automatic profiling for languages including C, C++, Go, Rust, .NET, Deno, Erlang, Java, Julia, Node.js, Wasmtime, PHP, Ruby, and Python. Installation options include binaries, containers, Kubernetes, and Snaps. Parca is open source under the Apache 2 License and is free. The agent requires Linux kernel 4.18 or newer and privileged access to load eBPF programs. Parca says it receives profiling statistics and function-name metadata, not binaries or source code.