Side by side
Google Cloud Managed Service for Prometheus vs Thanos
Both stand on metrics monitoring tools. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Free trial APILinuxSelf-hosted+1
This service combines managed Prometheus collection with long retention, global querying, and Cloud Monitoring features. Review ingestion and read-call billing, plus downsampling rules, before selecting it.
Visit Google Cloud Managed Service for Prometheus Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted
Thanos 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.
Visit ThanosThe facts
| Google Cloud Managed Service for Prometheus | Thanos | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | A free trial | Yes |
| Open source | Not published | Not published |
| Runs on | API, Linux, Self-hosted, Web | API, Linux, Self-hosted |
| Lowest paid plan | Monitoring API read calls: $0.50 a month | Free or on request |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | cloud.google.com | thanos.io |
| On metrics monitoring tools | #27 of 36 | #23 of 36 |
Google Cloud Managed Service for Prometheus: what it does well
- 730-day metric retention
- Managed or self-deployed collectors
- PromQL, Grafana, and HTTP API support
- Global queries and rule evaluation
- SLO monitoring support
What to know first
- No free plan
- Metrics ingestion has no monthly free allotment
- Minimum scrape interval is five seconds
- Data is downsampled after six weeks
Thanos: what it does well
- Queries metrics across Prometheus servers and clusters.
- Supports unlimited retention using object storage.
- Downsamples historical data for large-range queries.
- Works with Grafana via the Prometheus Query API.
What to know first
- Requires Prometheus v2.2.1+ with persistent disk.
- Local metrics are not encrypted by Thanos.
- HTTP APIs lack authorization and TLS support.
- Single-node production use is not recommended.
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