Softwr

AI · head to head

Avathon vs Thanos

Avathon logo

Avathon

AI

Industrial AI for asset performance and renewables, formerly SparkCognition

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Thanos logo

Thanos

Cloud

Highly available Prometheus with long-term object storage

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Thanos has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Avathon the company rebranded from SparkCognition to Avathon and narrowed its focus after repeated reported layoff rounds, so reference checks and roadmap commitments made under the old name need reconfirming.; Thanos several components — sidecar, store, querier, compactor, ruler — each with its own configuration and failure modes
  • They diverge on capability: Avathon covers Renewable Suite, Thanos covers Global query.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Avathon and Thanos actually diverge.

Attributes where Avathon and Thanos differ
AttributeAvathonThanos
Starting priceOn requestFree
Pricing modelquoteOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, CloudKubernetes, Linux, Docker
CategoryAICloud

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Avathon

  • Renewable Suite
  • Loss attribution
  • Predictive maintenance models
  • Computer vision
  • Digital twin models
  • Work order integration
  • Fleet benchmarking
  • Document intelligence

Only in Thanos

  • Global query
  • Object storage retention
  • Deduplication
  • Downsampling

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Avathon

  • A wind fleet owner wanting underperforming turbines ranked by lost megawatt hours rather than by alarm countnot Thanos
  • A solar independent power producer detecting inverter and string underperformance that falls below the SCADA alarm thresholdnot Thanos
  • A manufacturer with years of historian data and failure records who wants failure prediction models trained on their own historynot Thanos
  • A site using cameras to detect missing personal protective equipment or unauthorised entry into restricted zonesnot Thanos

Thanos

  • Querying metrics across many clusters or regions from one placenot Avathon
  • Retaining metrics for years without local disk growthnot Avathon
  • Removing the gap that appears when a single Prometheus instance restartsnot Avathon

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Avathon

  • The company rebranded from SparkCognition to Avathon and narrowed its focus after repeated reported layoff rounds, so reference checks and roadmap commitments made under the old name need reconfirming.
  • Headcount is in the low hundreds against a product portfolio spanning renewables, vision, predictive maintenance and document AI, which is thin coverage per product line for enterprise support expectations.
  • Model accuracy depends on having enough labelled historical failures, and sites with short data history or poor maintenance record-keeping get generic anomaly detection rather than useful failure prediction.
  • Nothing is published about pricing or asset-count thresholds, so there is no way to judge whether a small fleet is even a viable customer without entering a sales cycle.
  • It sits on top of your SCADA and CMMS rather than replacing them, so the integration and asset-hierarchy mapping work is a real project cost that the software subscription does not cover.

Thanos

  • Several components — sidecar, store, querier, compactor, ruler — each with its own configuration and failure modes
  • The compactor is a common source of operational trouble and must not run twice against the same bucket
  • Query latency over object storage is meaningfully higher than local Prometheus
  • Object storage costs and API request charges become real at high volume

Pricing, plan by plan

Avathon

On request
  • Avathon$undefined/year
    • Annual subscription sized by asset count or installed megawatts for renewables
    • Separate pricing for vision, predictive maintenance and document products
    • Model development and data onboarding quoted as a professional services project

Thanos

Free
  • ThanosFree
    • Full functionality
    • No usage limits
    • Community support

Which should you pick?

Choose Avathon if

  • You need renewable suite.
  • You work on Web, Cloud.
  • You also want loss attribution.
Avathon review

Choose Thanos if

  • You need global query.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Kubernetes, Linux, Docker.
  • You also want object storage retention.
Thanos review

Questions people ask

Is Avathon or Thanos better?
Neither clearly leads. Avathon starts at On request and Thanos at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Avathon or Thanos?
Thanos has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for Avathon and Free for Thanos.
Does Avathon or Thanos run on more platforms?
Avathon runs on Web, Cloud. Thanos runs on Kubernetes, Linux, Docker.
Can I use Thanos for free?
Yes. Thanos has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Avathon starts at On request.
What is Avathon best used for?
Avathon is most often used for a wind fleet owner wanting underperforming turbines ranked by lost megawatt hours rather than by alarm count, a solar independent power producer detecting inverter and string underperformance that falls below the scada alarm threshold, a manufacturer with years of historian data and failure records who wants failure prediction models trained on their own history, a site using cameras to detect missing personal protective equipment or unauthorised entry into restricted zones. Of those, a wind fleet owner wanting underperforming turbines ranked by lost megawatt hours rather than by alarm count and a solar independent power producer detecting inverter and string underperformance that falls below the scada alarm threshold are not what Thanos is typically brought in for.
What can Avathon do that Thanos cannot?
Avathon covers Renewable Suite, Loss attribution, Predictive maintenance models, Computer vision. Thanos covers Global query, Object storage retention, Deduplication, Downsampling.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Avathon: Is this the same company as SparkCognition?

Yes. SparkCognition rebranded to Avathon and refocused on industrial and government asset AI.

Thanos: Is Thanos free?

Yes, open source and CNCF-incubating. Costs are the object storage it uses.

Avathon: Which product is most mature?

The renewable energy suite for wind and solar underperformance, which has the longest production deployment history.

Thanos: Does Thanos replace Prometheus?

No. It runs alongside existing Prometheus servers, adding global query, deduplication and long-term storage.

Avathon: Does it need my historian data in the cloud?

Generally yes for model training and ongoing scoring, which is a security review item for utility and defence customers.

Thanos: Thanos or VictoriaMetrics?

Thanos layers onto Prometheus using object storage and is the more established multi-cluster answer. VictoriaMetrics is a separate store aiming at lower resource use and fewer moving parts.

Avathon: Can it work without historical failure records?

It will still do anomaly detection, but failure prediction models need labelled historical failures to be worth the deployment cost.

Share

Related pages

More on Avathon

More on Thanos

Keep looking

Other head to heads