Free and open first
Best Metrics Monitoring Tools in 2026
Metrics monitoring tools help you work with measurements used to observe services or infrastructure. Compare data ingestion, custom metrics, data retention, and query language, along with SLO tracking, to assess how each option fits your monitoring needs. A self-hosted option, free-plan availability, and the Paid from field offer further points to weigh. The entries include Netdata, Checkmk, and Dynatrace Kubernetes Monitoring, as well as Grafana Cloud Application Observability and InfluxDB. Consider which data you need to collect and retain, how you plan to query it, and which deployment and pricing details matter for your setup.
- 37 apps
- Research read 23 Sept 2026
- How the order is worked out
- 1
Checkmk
Free plan Open source AndroidAPIiPhone+5Checkmk offers broad infrastructure coverage and several monitoring methods, with a free Community option for smaller environments.
- 2
Netdata
Free plan Open source AndroidAPIiPhone+5Netdata combines infrastructure metrics, logs, alerts, and troubleshooting across cloud and on-premises deployment options.
- 3
Azure Monitor
Free plan APILinuxMac+2 - 4
Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus
Free plan APISelf-hostedWebThis service provides hosted Prometheus-compatible monitoring with broad AWS integrations, scaling, and long listed retention.
7.5 Visit site - 5
Google Cloud Monitoring
Free plan APILinuxWeb+1Google Cloud Monitoring brings metrics, uptime checks, dashboards, and alerting into a cloud service with support for hybrid and multicloud environments.
- 6
Amazon CloudWatch Logs
Free plan APIWebCloudWatch Logs combines collection, querying, live viewing, and cross-account analysis, with a stated free tier. Costs depend on usage and region, so account for ingestion and any paid Live Tail use.
- 7
collectd
Free plan LinuxSelf-hostedWindowsChoose collectd if you need a free daemon to collect system and application metrics and can use its storage or network output.
- 8
Grafana Cloud Application Observability
Free plan AndroidAPIExtension+5Grafana Cloud Application Observability brings several telemetry types and service-level views together for application investigation.
- 9
Icinga
Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted+2Icinga offers self-hosted monitoring with a free edition and options for distributed setups, certificate monitoring, and integrations.
- 10
InfluxDB
Free plan APILinuxMac+3InfluxDB 3 combines multiple ingestion and query options with self-managed, managed, and open-source deployment choices.
- 11
groundcover
by groundcoverFree plan LinuxSelf-hostedWebgroundcover combines eBPF-based telemetry collection with cloud and on-premises deployment options. Compare the retention, support, and per-host plan details with your monitoring needs.
- 12
M3
Free plan APILinuxMac+1Pick M3 for open-source, Prometheus-compatible metrics storage when long retention, scaling, and its supported query and ingestion options fit your needs.
- 13
Nagios XI
Free plan APILinuxMac+3Nagios XI offers self-hosted monitoring, a limited free edition, and perpetual paid licenses priced by node count.
- 14
Graphite
Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted+1Graphite combines time-series storage with graph and dashboard rendering, several ingestion methods, and multiple output formats.
- 15
Prometheus
Free plan LinuxMacSelf-hosted+2Prometheus provides a free monitoring and alerting toolkit with flexible metric collection and querying. Its stated accuracy limitation makes it unsuitable for per-request billing workloads.
- 16
Sematext APM
Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted+2Sematext APM brings monitoring, log management, tracing, and alerting together in Sematext Cloud.
- 17
Grafana k6
by Grafana k6Free plan LinuxGrafana k6 combines several kinds of testing with tracing, logging and profiling capabilities.
- 18
SigNoz
Free plan AndroidAPIiPhone+2SigNoz brings monitoring signals, querying, alerting, dashboards, and tracing into one observability tool.
- 19
VictoriaMetrics
by VictoriaMetricsFree plan APILinuxMac+3VictoriaMetrics offers open-source and managed deployment paths for metrics, logs, and traces. Cloud buyers should review tier limits and hourly usage metering alongside the listed starting prices.
- 20
Zabbix
Free plan APILinuxMac+3Zabbix covers a broad range of monitoring sources and methods, with synthetic browser checks and a free plan. Subscription support and server or proxy allowances vary by tier.
- 21
Grafana Alerting
Free plan LinuxMacWeb+1 - 22
PulseBoard
Free plan LinuxMacSelf-hosted+2PulseBoard offers a self-managed way to collect and explore telemetry, with several ingestion paths and alert routing.
- 23
Thanos
Free plan APILinuxSelf-hostedThanos provides cross-cluster querying and long-term storage for Prometheus environments. Its security limitations around local metrics and HTTP APIs should be weighed when planning a deployment.
- 24
Datadog Infrastructure Monitoring
Free plan LinuxMacWeb+1 - 25
OpenObserve
Free plan WebOpenObserve brings pipeline processing, parsing, live viewing and archive export together for log work.
#1Places #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 on this list can be bought by the makers of the software on it. See the price
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