Mermin vs Parca
Mermin
github.com
Parca
parca.devSide by side
| Figure | Mermin | Parca |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · eBPF Observability Tools | 7.1 (#22) | 8.1 (#9) |
| Deployment | Mermin runs as a Kubernetes DaemonSet with one pod per node, or as a privileged container on bare metal. | The project documents installation using binaries, containers, Kubernetes, and Snaps. |
| Maker | ElastiFlow says its project was created by Rob Cowart, who started it on GitHub in May 2017. | Polar Signals says it was founded in 2020. |
| Support | The project directs users to GitHub Issues, GitHub Discussions, Slack, and documentation, and points to ElastiFlow for commercial support. | Polar Signals offers paid support for users of Parca’s open-source project. |
Plans
In their own words
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.