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VictoriaMetrics

Fast, cost-effective time series database for metrics

Overview

What VictoriaMetrics does

VictoriaMetrics is an open-source time series database and monitoring solution, designed as a drop-in long-term store for Prometheus metrics. It speaks PromQL and the Prometheus remote write protocol, so existing dashboards and alerts keep working. Its reason to exist is cost. Prometheus is excellent at collection but was not designed for long retention at scale, and teams keeping months of high-cardinality metrics hit memory and disk problems. VictoriaMetrics targets exactly that, claiming substantially lower resource use for the same data.

What people use it for

  • Keeping months or years of Prometheus metrics without the memory cost
  • High-cardinality metrics where Prometheus struggles
  • Consolidating metrics from many Prometheus instances into one queryable store

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 VictoriaMetrics.

  • PromQL compatibility is very close but not identical, and MetricsQL extensions do not port back
  • Smaller community than Prometheus, so fewer guides and third-party integrations
  • The clustered version has meaningfully more moving parts than the single binary suggests
  • Some enterprise features sit outside the open-source offering

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of VictoriaMetrics

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.

Pricing

What VictoriaMetrics costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

VictoriaMetrics

Free

  • Full functionality
  • No data limits
  • Community support

Capabilities

Features

  • PromQL compatible

    Existing Prometheus queries, dashboards and alerts work unchanged

  • Low resource use

    Designed for lower memory and disk consumption at long retention

  • Single binary or cluster

    Runs as one process for small setups, or clustered for scale

  • Remote write target

    Drops in behind Prometheus as long-term storage

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.

Is VictoriaMetrics free?

The open-source version is free with no data limits. An enterprise edition and cloud service are paid.

Does it replace Prometheus?

It can, but most teams keep Prometheus for scraping and use VictoriaMetrics as the long-term store behind it.

Is PromQL fully supported?

Very nearly. It implements PromQL and extends it with MetricsQL, though a small number of edge-case behaviours differ.

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for VictoriaMetrics, 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.

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