Side by side

Mackerel vs Pixie

Both stand on cloud monitoring. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

Mackerel

Free plan APILinuxWeb+1

Mackerel combines host and service metrics with cloud and container monitoring options. Its free plan has clear limits on hosts, retention, rules, and dashboards; paid usage is listed from 2,180 JPY/mo.

Visit Mackerel

Pixie

Free plan LinuxSelf-hostedWeb

Pixie provides Kubernetes telemetry collection and script-based debugging, with both hosted and self-hosted deployment options. Check its Kubernetes and Linux requirements, unsupported environments and privileged-access requirement before choosing it.

Visit Pixie

The facts

	Mackerel	Pixie
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Open source	Not published	Not published
Runs on	API, Linux, Web, Windows	Linux, Self-hosted, Web
Lowest paid plan	Free or on request	Free or on request
Plans published	3	2
Maker	Not published	Not published
Website	mackerel.io	px.dev
On cloud monitoring	#7 of 31	#11 of 31

Mackerel: what it does well

Organizes monitored hosts into services and roles.
Tracks user-defined service metrics.
Includes AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud integrations.
Monitors ECS tasks and Kubernetes pods.
Free plan supports five hosts total.

What to know first

Free plan retains data for one day.
Free plan allows only 10 monitoring rules.
Standard-plan technical support is email-only.
Free support contact is limited to business-day hours.

Pixie: what it does well

Collects metrics, events, traces and logs without code changes.
Supports custom debugging scripts and shared sessions.
Offers hosted and self-hosted deployments.
Free hosted versions are listed.

What to know first

Requires Kubernetes v1.21 or later and Linux nodes.
BPF-installing pods need privileged kernel access.
EKS Fargate, GKE Autopilot, Docker Desktop, k3d, kind and Windows are unsupported.

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