PM2 vs s6
PM2
pm2.keymetrics.ios6
skarnet.orgSide by side
| Figure | PM2 | s6 |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $79/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 6 | 1 |
| Spec score · Process Monitoring Software | 9.0 (#2) | 7.2 (#23) |
| Integrations | Official integration documentation covers Docker, Heroku, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, cloud providers, Nginx, transpilers and Capistrano-style deployments. | Related projects include s6-linux-init, s6-rc, s6-frontend, and s6-overlay for Docker images. |
| Purpose | PM2 is a daemon process manager that helps manage applications and keep them online. | s6 is a small suite of UNIX programs for process supervision and low-level administration of processes and services. |
| Security | The PM2 AI Assistant page says access to monitoring data is secured by OAuth with a PM2.io account. | The s6 page describes the suite as small and secure and lists utilities for access control and privilege handling; it does not state a security certification. |
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
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.