OpenProcMon vs PM2
OpenProcMon
github.com
PM2
pm2.keymetrics.ioSide by side
| Figure | OpenProcMon | PM2 |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $79/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 6 |
| Spec score · Process Monitoring Software | 7.9 (#9) | 9.0 (#2) |
| AI integration | The procmon-cli MCP server exposes capture and analysis operations to AI agents over stdio, and the project also provides a skill. | PM2 advertises an OAuth-secured MCP endpoint for Claude, Cursor and other compatible assistants, with 44 AI tools. |
| Limits | OpenProcMon targets 64-bit Windows only and does not support 32-bit .PML files. | The pricing FAQ says that when a plan's process limit is exceeded, the system automatically ignores randomly chosen excess processes. |
| Purpose | OpenProcMon is an open-source Process Monitor implementation for Windows. | PM2 is a daemon process manager that helps manage applications and keep them online. |
Plans
PM2
- PM2 RuntimeFree
- RuntimeFree
- Plus$79 a month
- PM2 Plus$79 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
- PM2 EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
OpenProcMon
OpenProcMon is a free, open-source process monitor for 64-bit Windows. It tracks process, file system, registry, and network activity in real time, with filters for process name, PID, operation, path, result, or category. Its interface includes a process tree, activity summaries, and call-stack views with per-frame module resolution. The tool reads and writes Sysinternals Process Monitor .PML logs, including logs made with the original Process Monitor. Developers can use its Rust SDK to connect to the driver, choose monitored activity, set filters, and consume parsed events programmatically. For AI-assisted capture and analysis, the procmon-cli MCP server operates over stdio and has setup instructions for clients including Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, and Cursor. Capture tools can export filtered results as PML, CSV, or XML. The v0.5.0 release offers a Windows x64 ZIP with the GUI, CLI/MCP server, console example, skill, and guides. Live capture needs Administrator privileges to load the kernel driver; analyzing an existing .PML file does not. The project is MIT-licensed and its Rust rewrite is described as under active development.
PM2
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.