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Prometheus
Open source monitoring and alerting toolkit for cloud native environments
As of 30 August 2026, Prometheus is free to use. Prometheus is an open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit originally built at SoundCloud. Softwr lists it under Networking. Prometheus is made by Cloud Native Computing Foundation, launched in 2015, available on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Overview
What Prometheus does
Prometheus is an open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit originally built at SoundCloud. It is now a standalone CNCF graduated project. Prometheus collects metrics from configured targets at given intervals, evaluates rule expressions, and can trigger alerts based on conditions.
What people use it for
- Monitoring and alerting system
- Time-series database
- Infrastructure metrics collection
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Prometheus.
- Not suitable for per-request billing as collected data lacks 100% accuracy
- Hard limit on scrape body size; large responses cause scrape failure
- Per-scrape sample limit enforced; exceeding limit marks targets as failed
- Not designed for long-term durable storage; optimised for metrics collection
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Prometheus
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- PrometheusvsConsul
Consul: Service discovery, networking, and security
- PrometheusvsGrafana
Grafana: Observability and Data Visualization
- PrometheusvsIvanti
Ivanti: Security, service management, and unified endpoint management
Pricing
What Prometheus costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Prometheus (Open Source)
Free
- 100% open source
- Community-driven project
- Apache 2 License
- All components available on GitHub
- CNCF graduated project
Capabilities
Features
Multi-dimensional Data Model
PromQL Query Language
Pull-based Collection
Service Discovery
Alerting Rules
Federation
Local Storage
Grafana
Integration with Grafana
Alertmanager
Integration with Alertmanager
Kubernetes
Integration with Kubernetes
Node Exporter
Integration with Node Exporter
Thanos
Integration with Thanos
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
What does Prometheus cost?
Prometheus is completely free and open source. There are no pricing tiers or paid plans. The entire project is licensed under Apache 2 and hosted on GitHub.
SourceIs Prometheus commercial software or free?
Prometheus is 100% open source and community-driven. It is a CNCF graduated project with no commercial restrictions or licensing fees.
SourceHow is Prometheus licensed?
Prometheus is licensed under the Apache 2 License, which permits free use, modification, and distribution for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
SourceBehind it
Who makes Prometheus
- Company
- Cloud Native Computing Foundation
- Based in
- San Francisco, California
Keep looking
Where to go from Prometheus
- Prometheus alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Prometheus pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Prometheus badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Networking softwareThe full category
- Best Networking softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Networking software for
Compare Prometheus with
- Traefik
- Grafana
- Cloudflare
- Consul
- Tailscale
- Ivanti
- Ubiquiti UniFi
- Palo Alto Networks
- Splunk
- Zabbix
- Netdata
- LibreNMS
- Domotz
- Headscale
- HiveMQ
- OPNsense
- ThousandEyes
- Netdata
Other Networking software
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Open source10 researched notesPer-second metrics collection with automatic dashboards and on-node anomaly detection
Open source9 researched notesFree, community-driven network monitoring with commercial support sold by a third-party partner, not the project itself
Open source11 researched notesNetwork monitoring for MSPs and IT teams priced per managed device or per collector, with published rates
12 researched notesOpen source reimplementation of the Tailscale coordination server for a single organisation
Open source12 researched notesEnterprise MQTT broker for industrial IoT with a published self-managed price list
Free, then $299/mo12 researched notesFreeBSD-based firewall and routing platform with weekly updates and a full configuration API
Open source10 researched notesInternet and network path monitoring, owned by Cisco but still sold as a standalone product on its own annual contracts
Pricing on request11 researched notesPer-second metrics collection with automatic dashboards and on-node anomaly detection
Open source9 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Prometheus, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Prometheus
Prometheus alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Prometheus pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Prometheus
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Prometheus badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
Best Networking software alternatives
Open source infrastructure monitoring, free at its core, with paid support and modules sold separately by Icinga GmbH
Open source core, with paid repository, module and support subscriptions sold separatelyNetwork monitoring for MSPs and IT teams priced per managed device or per collector, with published rates
Per collector or per managed device per month
AI-driven wireless and wired networking where a Wi-Fi Assurance subscription is a required, not optional, add-on
quote, hardware plus required Wi-Fi Assurance subscriptionFree, community-driven network monitoring with commercial support sold by a third-party partner, not the project itself
Open source, no licence fee; commercial support sold by a third-party partner
Internet and digital experience monitoring, with a genuinely published entry price through its WebPageTest product line
Free tier plus published entry tiers, enterprise quote-only
Network observability platform built on flow and traffic data, sold on annual-only contracts starting around $24,000/year
Annual contract only, per tier
Cloud-managed networking hardware where the licence is mandatory and the hardware stops passing traffic if it lapses
quote, hardware plus mandatory recurring licence
Cloud-based network monitoring and management priced by managed device count, quote-only
quote, per managed device